


Piety of the Fallen

by SegantEnfield



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's a witch, Blasphemy, Emotional Conversations, F/F, Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Genderfluid Aziraphale (Good Omens), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Generally the same bad events as in the show, I did as much guesswork as reserch, I swapped Jesus and Adam Young, Intoxication, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other, Paganism, That's mostly how my "process" goes, The Great Flood, The crucifixion kinda, The very moment Aziraphale heard of Other Gods he was into it, Trauma, cursing Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery's immortal soul to avenge Agnes, it's because nobody stopped me from projecting, most on impulse, pining but stonger now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:04:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegantEnfield/pseuds/SegantEnfield
Summary: When God sculpted Raphael, She envisioned a sort of test run for a function She was considering bestowing on humans. The universe had not yet felt the pulse of romance, the power of two souls that truly know each other. She crafted a soul perfectly shaped to fit against Raphael's, formed from the concept of love itself, and named this new soul Aziraphael, or "Of Raphael".Another thing that is always true in every strand of time: despite what they were made for, Raphael and Aziraphael are on opposite sides. This is, to God's frustrated confusion, not something she can much control. If Raphael does not fall, Aziraphael acts up- gets on every other angel's bad side. The Archangel and the Cherub made to love him were cursed to oppose each other.





	1. Before Common Era

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so this will come in two chapters and because I'm pretty stupid, and it's been like two years since I've posted a new story I've forgotten how to make it show that this work is not finished, i have to look through my inbox for when somebody told me the first time  
I'm sorry for the Uuuh, confusion, of it saying 1/1, when in fact it should say 1/2  
I figured it out, y'all.  
It only spent like,, five hours like that  
The next chapter, if I do my shit right, will encompass,,, whatever comes between 31 AD and 2019

By some standards, God is significantly worse at making decisions than the most indecisive mortal. She is worse, even, than the most indecisive of ethereal beings (one could argue this was Aziraphale). This is because each time any human is faced with a fork in the road they ultimately must choose a path, or go off road. The point is they can't walk both paths at once. The same rule doesn't apply to God.

Since the beginning, while it started as a side project, She maped Time and found the three dimensional glowing shape she had drawn closely resembled a tree. Or tight roots, or veins. It was organic in any case. Some of the strands that parted found themselves joined again by later decisions. Some, and these were the most interesting to God, have dramatic splitis, getting almost into the territory of arteries and branches. Somewhere early on in time, that happened regularly. One such decision was an interesting study on… Chaos theory? Maybe it was a case on nature vs nurture in a very specific way. This decision which, like with all others, God chose both options at once just to see, was whether Crowley should fall.

Always Crowley

That was one of the first things that piqued God's interests in these parallel strands of time. The fact that Cowley, upon seeing the shining black birds with thin legs and loud voices and mistic energy, would think "I want to be named after these". It just so happens that in one reality, Crowley was a name that replaced the high status name of Raphael when the Archangel was demoted by the other angels after his failure to protect the Tree of knowledge in Eden, and subsequent failure to understand what the harm really was in them eating it, anyway. None of that was in God's plan for him.

When God sculpted Raphael, She envisioned a sort of test run for a function She was considering bestowing on humans. The universe had not yet felt the pulse of romance, the power of two souls that truly know each other. She crafted a soul perfectly shaped to fit against Raphael's, formed from the concept of love itself, and named this new soul Aziraphael, or "Of Raphael".

Another thing that is always true in every strand of time: despite what they were made for, Raphael and Aziraphael are on opposite sides. This is, to God's frustrated confusion, not something she can much control. If Raphael does not fall, Aziraphael acts up- gets on every other angel's bad side. The Archangel and the Cherub made to love him were cursed to oppose each other.

A difference that God couldn't help but notice: this time, they were afraid of each other in the beginning. Not before the beginning, when they meet in passing and shared pleasant small talk, or when Lucifer and so many others fell- But rather, it began in Eden, after the first humans were made.

**4004 B.C., Eden/Present Day Sahara Desert**

Hells newest fallen, sent to prove himself with some Earthly chaos in Eden, never lost his soft white curls or his ability to turn into a lamb. His decision to take this unassuming form beneath the branches, on the newly made ground littered with fallen apple blossoms, would prove to be the second most dramatic change to this version of the world in that it's cultural influences would come to affect nearly every post bible human life in a very round-about way. This is because the quite large snake which lounged above the lamb in the branches of the tree felt he was in the garden to protect, not corrupt, the humans. When he saw them running about he felt a deep worry that they might hurt themselves on the uneven Garden floor. At least, he thought, he could be sure he would be there to heal them if it were to happen.

Long after this event, as history marches on, as Christianity spread, snakes would become symbolic of purity and God's will. Conversely, there would be a time when farmers wouldn't let their young daughters near their sheep, for superstitious fear that the touch of a lambs wool would permanently sever their young Eve from heaven.

The snake-shaped archangel dozed heavily enough to miss the hushed tones of a short conversation below him, but not heavily enough to miss the resounding crunch of the very first bite taken from an Apple in the so far short history of the world. What happened next went too fast to follow, but it ended with an Angel and Demon standing on a tall stone wall watching two humans stumble over a sand dune, illuminated by the fierce glow of a heavenly sword. This was not their first conversation, but it was their first since one had fallen.

"I didn't think she'd _disown_ them" Aziraphale said, tone and expression equally distraught. He realized shortly after he heard the words aloud that he should've expected it. He glanced to the side of him, to the white robes, black fathers, and angled lines of the Archangel. "Perhaps I should have, considering Lilith…" Aziraphale regretted following Lilith down* but not as much as he regretted being so blindly in favor of a being who would create a sentient life form for the sole purpose of being subservient to an equally sentient life form. With hindsight, that's what God had done to the angels, not just the humans. "Is it really choice- true free will- if one option is obedience in paradise and the other is freedom and damnation?" He mused. "You don't have to answer, Raphael, we both know the trouble you could get into" the divine name hurt to say, in a way it never had before.

*not because of her, he still quite liked Lilith. He regretted falling in general

The angel swallowed, willing himself to not dwell on the demon's evocative thoughts and avoiding Aziraphale's gaze. This is not because of any fear of demonic energy, but because his very eyes showed that he was forever changed. While still a startling blue, his pupils were more horizontal suggestions of round shapes than perfect circles "I actually might change it. The name. Haven't figured out what yet… are you keeping yours?" With luck, he sounded conversational. With luck, the hope didn't shine through in his voice. He did like 'Aziraphael' as a name.

The demon, for only a moment, looked pleasantly surprised to hear him. "Well I did move the 'e' a smidge. After the 'L' now. It's said 'Aziraphale'."

It was still a pretty name, it was practically unchanged. The angel smiled "Just that much? Is that allowed down there? A name that sounds so _holy_, I mean."

The demon gave a hum "I really ought to change it more, hm? Everyone else my side of the line has. Well. _Almost_ everyone. I think I quite like the idea of keeping it, though. After all, I've been informed that I'm rebellious, that I defy orders, far too insubordinate for heaven." he narrowed tired eyes in disdain, or maybe hurt. "Why not lean in?"

"So you refuse to do what you're meant to? Is that why you cried for them? Gave them your wool?" Raphael asked this much more gently than Aziraphale expected but he flinched at the words nonetheless.

The demon put a hand on the shorn hair at the nape of his neck and the base of his skull*. Other than that patch, his bipedal earthly form showed no evidence that as a lamb, he had willfully stepped out of his own woolen coat and gave all he could to Eve. "She was _pregnant_!" He said, indignant and defensive. "And don't act as though you've done nothing. I saw you hand over that sword- one She personally gave out"

*this would never grow back. His lamb form suffered more for it, still

Sharp eyebrows rose above golden elliptical eyes as Raphael leaned imperceptibly toward the demon "I'm not judging you. I'm just saying, maybe you should be more careful to not be seen the next time you do something good"

There was a pause. Their previous conversions never had this much weight to them. What was there of emotional importance to talk about back then? They hadn't lived long enough, hadn't seen their family be severed in half, hadn't known the nature of their creator. Aziraphale had no choice but to grow up rather quickly over the last week or so. He had been brought into a world one day, only to find it drastically changing around him the moment he began to understand. "I wish someone would just tell us. Write a list of every action one could take and label each as good or bad" there was another pause, during which the only sound was the roar of a beast in the desert below and the sickening slice that followed. Aziraphale was sure he could hear the distinct sizzle of holy flame cauterizing the wound as it formed. He winced. "It's not as if it's safe to ask. Especially not for you and that's the worst part of it isn't it? If either of us could use the information it's you"

The archangel didn't hesitate to nod his understanding. "Do you know I have no idea why I'm still…" he trailed off, worried, distantly, despite knowing it's foolish, were he to say it- to put holy words into the air for fear of calling Her attention to this conversation he really shouldn't be having.

Aziraphale knew what he refused to say and was happy for the Archangel for a moment because surely -he- doesn't feel as empty and cold as he did without heaven's light. He spared a glance above to the gleaming, vast, empty, bird cage and below to the caves, cold enough to make the water droplets which fell from the stalactites sting on the skin. He jumped when he noticed his first drops of rain seeping ice onto his scalp, but, with a glance up he calmed. His wings were on the short list of features that changed in his decent. There were two of them and not four, and they were no longer white- or rather, not fully white. He hadn't yet seen a magpie, but when he happens upon one later and observes their kleptomania, much like the behavior his insatiable and now unchecked curiosity brought him to in the case of books, he understands. One such scarab green wing extended outwards as he shifted closer to the angel*, shielding him from the next drops that might aim towards the pristine curls that rested on white robes, on thin shoulders, on six starlight wings. While he was close he whispered, imploring, "don't risk falling it's not worth the answer"

*The other wing began to shield Aziraphale a moment later

The archangel made a soft gasping sound, which rattled- or maybe it hissed. His eyes were stuck on the soft white hair and somehow softer feathers. The thought of someone who looked as made for the role of Angel- who's hair glowed in the sun like god-rays on cumulus clouds, who's hands looked so soft and gentle- as Aziraphale did being cut off from heaven made his eyes sting. He didn't even know how it happened. After the majority of those who would fall had fallen, after the ensuing battles, he had seen him in heaven, still smiling, wings white and pupils round. With his tragically low capacity to blink, he had to look away and think some quick, threatening thoughts directed at the vague beginnings of tears that got cocky enough to gather at what could roughly be called his lower eyelid. "Is it that bad, lamb?"

Aziraphale swallowed, unable to meet a radiant gaze when he knows he won't get far without becoming visibly upset*. A raindrop on his cheek, splashed from the wing told him that at least it won't be obvious "it's horrible. When I spoke to Eve, I couldn't feel anything good. Nothing positive. All I could feel was her fear. I couldn't even feel how much she loved Adam I had to _look_ for it, to know it was there at all. Even after everything, none of my questions are answered" he was nearly proud of himself for not choking on the words. Except that he did, he choked on 'loved'.

*that is to say, shaking or weeping

The angel began to circle Aziraphale, assessing him. He didn't know what he was looking for at all and for a second he was genuinely _distracted_ by the way the demon's winter blue eyes were fixed on him. There wasn't fear. He watched his every motion out of interest. A gaze that had one goal and it was to learn more, learn everything he can about the world, and the angel around him. His magpie's wing attempted to follow him, to keep the pristine linen dry. Heaven's child took no notice of the drops of water plummeting from the vengeful clouds above.

Aziraphale wondered if there was synonym for clouds, something less gentle, something harsher. She had named these thunderclouds "cumulonimbus". Aziraphale, in this moment, thought they ought to be called "wrath". He didn't know he'd be thinking the same thing in Mesopotamia, huddled with _Crowley_ and as many towns people as they could hole up in what one could accurately, if dramatically, refer to as a "cave of miracles". All he knew was that he wanted to keep this particular part of heaven in his life. This one angel who's never threatened him, never forced him from the holy kingdom. Never uh. Never took his eyes off him. Even though Aziraphale would like him to. Aziraphale wanted him to stop orbiting him- then remembered he's a snake, so what he's doing is probably muscle memory of coiling his body around his prey, and not gravity's pull. He wanted him to speak. To look away, even just glance. To blink. Turning and twisting himself on the high wall was begging to get disorienting "Angel, really dear, could you stand still for a moment? what are you doing?"

Finally, mercifully, he blinked, body settling in front of Aziraphale. "You sounded so hurt" he said slowly, sure he was overstepping. In his assessment of the demon, he found no obvious disfigurement, no vermin or insects crawling on or out of his body, but his eyes were a pale blue now, too pale, ghostly, with the confusing pupils of a real lamb. Those wings, which got whiter the more they unfolded, there were only two of them. The angel was sure He could remember a time when Aziraphale had four. He fought to find words but what do you say to a person who's wings had been cut off? "Did… did they… well they _must_ have healed you after, right?" His voice was pained and he didn't get it all out without stuttering. He hadn't said anything with emotional weight without a stutter yet and wouldn't in the future.

Aziraphale liked how the angel hesitated through words, he could tell he was always thinking, but the substance of those words wouldn't let him live in a world where he was fully in tact. Where he had the exact amount of wings he was made with and his back had no scars and no reason to be in agony, "You really shouldn't be so worried about a demon, Archangel"

"You shouldn't be so respectful of an _angel_ that you won't say a name you know they don't like" Said the serpent, regretful of pushing a boundary he shouldn't have.

"Nobody deserves to be _told_ who they are" Aziraphale shrugged.

What the angel wished he could say was "I'd rather worship you- have you as a god". What he settled for saying was, "sun's going down. Do we want to get out of here before She comes back for a look at her tree?"

"We?"

There was a pause, and then stammering "w-well I mean- th-there… the point… I frankly don't see why we'd- I mean nobody is looking and neither of us know this world. Seems uh… s-seems foolish, don't you think? To go off into that dessert alone." Though he was forcing his expression to remain unaffected, he would have liked to get a running start and pitch his body off the side of the towering wall.

Aziraphale couldn't help a soft smile at the copious amounts of effort the Angel put into getting the words out. He hummed to show that he was considering the question "well there's nothing for us _out there_. But you're right that she might come back. Tell me, Archangel, if I'm lucky, that you had a hand in the geography of this area?"

He smiled at the demon and shook his head "no lamb I won't lie to you".

"I'd never blame you if you did. Oh. Oh dear, the wall has a hole in it. We really shouldn't make it so easy for the humans to get back in" his eyebrows drew together and he bit his lip in worry.

"Best to get that handled before anything else" The Archangel agreed as he stretched out his spine and extended his flight wings. The other two sets stayed tucked around his body. He stepped up onto the ledge, closing his eyes so that he could focus on the feeling of wind through his feathers, blowing his robes around his calves and his hair around his shoulders. When he lazily turned his head and opened an eye, Aziraphale hadn't moved, except to draw his own wings tighter around himself. "Are you ready?"

Aziraphale swallowed and it was audible.

The closer he looked, the quicker he understood. They must have cut the wrong set, leaving the demon with the ability to hide from God, the way only high ranking heavenly beings are permitted to, but not the ability to fly. He should have noticed that the set he still had was slightly too small. Without the immense span of flight wings, they'd never be able to lift an adult human sized creature off the ground. "Oh. Well, no trouble, I'll just carry you down"

The demon shook his head, cheeks warming in embarrassment at his inability. "I'm heavier than you"

Looking the demon over, he hummed disbelief "I'm quite a bit taller than you"

Aziraphale couldn't have looked less amused "You're the skinniest thing I've ever spoken to"

"Just let me give you a hand, lamb,

"Oh" he smiled "well you're very clever"

Confusion gave way to understanding as he watched the demon return to his woolen form. As hard as it is to find a lamb that couldn't be called "cute", this lamb was painfully so. Sheared to his head, he looked small and helpless, and it became impossible to hold back his "coo"s. His hand reached out to feel the lambs fluffy head, nearly forgetful of that lamb's status as the enemy. Then, as easily as picking up a tiny child, he lifted the young ruminant and began the quick descent.

Every stone previously pulled from the wall was laying helpfully on the ground directly on the outside and the moment he had hands again, Aziraphale went to work putting them in their rightful place.

In another strand of time, the angel Aziraphale stood at the base of this wall and repaired it alone. When God called out to this version of him to ask after the misplaced sword, he quivered in her holy light and fearfully lied to her.

Now, in the same instant that happened in a less than distant timeline, when the harsh, inspecting God Rays began to shine on the stone in the timeline with which we are currently concerned, Aziraphale wasn't alone and he wasn't an angel. His first action was to turn and face the light, hiding the Archangel behind him with his wings.

If we were privy to such unknowable information as what god thought at that moment, we would know that she hadn't expected to see Aziraphale at all. She expected Raphael to be the one patching the wall. She expected to be able to ask Raphael about the sword she had given him and she existed to be met with an honest answer to contrast a lying angel. Instead, all She saw was a lone demon, wings spread defiantly behind him.

AZIRAPHALE, she said his name like a parent pretending they hadn't recently violently punished their child. As if nothing had happened that might strain the relationship. WHERE IS THE ARCHANGEL RAPHAEL?

Aziraphale held a fury towards god that was as righteous as his newly unholy soul was capable of. This rage is what helped to overpower the trembling fear and cold dread in him. "The absolute _nerve_ you have, inviting yourself back into my life. You've banished half your children and you've got the entitlement to make demands? Requests? To talk to me at all, really. No, I haven't seen your damn child, now move along". It made him feel better for a moment. Not as good as it felt to see the holy light fade, the serpent behind him unharmed and uncaught. "Are you okay angel?"

He couldn't help but gape at the demon. "I… I-I can't believe you just… _nobody_ would ever speak to her like that"

Aziraphale's answer, at first, was just a distressed whine as he fussed over the wall again, adjusting the final strone in its place. He was shaking "we need to part ways. We can't get caught together again, not when I can't be sure She won't see you". There was piercing silence for a moment as the demon waited to be left alone. But there was no shifting of fabric or flapping of wings. He turned his head to peak at the angel. "Why haven't you left?"

"I-I didn't realize you were serious…"

He turned away again "I am. I won't travel with the likes of you I refuse."

Several silent seconds passed before feathers slid against feathers and six night-sky wings spread to catch the wind. Aziraphale didn't watch him go.

**3805 B.C., Winter**

Civilization picked up with impossible speed. Only two centuries passed and the humans had already thrown themselves thoroughly into the stone age. Pottery was already a reasonably advanced art and trade was starting to happen between communities instead of just individuals. The sheer volume of the population, Crowley was sure, couldn't have sprung up from just one pair. There must have been other people, other than Adam and Eve but just as old. God would have told him if She made more than two, wouldn't She? Was there a third out there? A fourth?

God never actually told him anything, not anymore. Their days of familial collaboration on the stars were over and the archangel was left cold without the warm light of Her Grace. He still talked to Her, or at Her, every night before he slept. He hadn't seen or spoken to that demon he liked to pretend not to remember the name (and every other detail) of, which, similarly, he liked to pretend was fine*. He _did_, however, have a run in with every single angel in heaven, gathered to watch him get his tertiary wings violently removed from his neck as punishment for the corruption of humanity under his watch. Not his most graceful moment.

* these were some of the few things he couldn't make true by pretending hard enough.

The people themselves were a delight, especially the kids, but under the miserable condition of the ancient winters, no human dared wander the vast desert. Crowley didn't have the same options, and thus found himself trudging through a blizzard for what felt like the third day. He was fortunate for his ethereal body and it's inability to freeze but the fact remained that he was a snake, and therefore craved the warm sun more than the humans craved water. The frigid air wicked away his energy through the skin of his face, the snowflakes burning the same flesh. No matter how tightly he wrapped the fur cloak around himself, the biting wind forced its way through to claw at his legs like hungry wolves.

The individual moments in his short term memory bleed together, hours and hours of scanning the tundra, eyes burned by the uninterrupted white light. If he was going in a circle, there would be no way to know as he traveled in a direction his mind could only describe as "forward". He really should have found somewhere to wait out the winter before it started. In his defence, he was sure it was early this year. He shuddered, not because of the cold, but because of the radiating ambient Love he could feel hit him like a midnight ocean wave. There must have been a sizeable and particularly amorous group of humans nearby, a settlement of at least fifty. Through the pale haze in the wind, Crowley could make out the vaulted peak of a mountain with a squint. For the sake of having a set and visible goal, he began to force his legs through the snow towards it. Getting closer gradually, the shape of the mighty formation became clearer, plastered with clumped frost. Somewhere under the white mounds were bound to be wild trees and bushes. It was from behind one of these piles that a blurry patch of black reacted to his presence with a vague movement.

"Angel, is that you?" Called a carefully controlled voice. The movement had been Aziraphale, emerging from the hidden little mouth of a cave wrapped in black fur. "Dear boy, are you out here looking for your death? Really now, how is this sensible? come in, come in, I've found something rather curious."

Cowley, too dazed and confused to properly react, just watched the painfully warm hand grab his wrist and tug him through the threshold of the cave, into a round chamber lit dimly by the small fire in the center. They were both covered in snow, to different extents. Crowley was rid of the slush with a miracle. Aziraphale took off his dark cloak- he was a sheep in wolves fur, Crowley realized with amusement- and what he wore under was a leather tunic, the kind the humans wore, in a deep dark brown. It was sewn and embellished with an awl and leather thong, and something told Crowley it really was made by human hands. This is a surprise considering the deliberately placed slits in his back that made room for his wings. They were ruffled, but shone in the light of the flame. "I thought we were meant to be acting as enemies". It came out more petulant than he'd ever have liked to sound, but he still wanted the answer.

Aziraphale, in the midst of fluttering about arranging two cups and a water jug in the vague sitting area, turned and looked at Crowley with wide lambs eyes "She very nearly saw you with me".

"Yes well-" Crowley stopped. Heaven was terrifying, he knew that, especially now. And tertiary wings, just big enough to obscure his head, simply didn't have as much connective tissue and muscle as flight wings. He couldn't even begin to imagine that pain. "I've um. I've chosen a name"

Aziraphale tilted his head with interest "oh? And what's your name, angel?"

"Crowley" he said proudly.

"_Crowley_. Like the birds?"

Having heard the way Aziraphale says the name, he was sure he wanted to keep it. "Exactly" he grinned "clever buggers. And the memory they have! Never seen a bird I particularly like other than a good corvid"

"I think they're lovely" the demon sat at his dwindling little fire and poured water into the cups he had readied. "Did you know that magpies are in the corvidae family?" It wasn't subtle, the way he smiled and wiggled when he said this, his wings making a small flapping motion. It set Crowley's heart alight.

Crowley took the cup that was handed to him and started on the process of emptying the cup with hundreds of little sips. "I like magpies. Interesting what they're known for though, hmm?" He looked Aziraphale over, assessing him yet another time. Does he have quick fingers and silent steps? Does he wear layers just to hide something that isn't his? "Have you ever _stolen_ anything?" He said it slow and, hopefully, without judgement.

Aziraphale smiled slyly and raised an eyebrow "a few hearts", he sang lightly.

The angel didn't decide between saying "what", "wait", or "hey" before all three tried to leave his mouth at once. His eyebrows shot high up, but he was unable to keep from smiling. He thanked His Mother for his cold blood that made it impossible to blush. "Cheeky" he managed.

"Well, if we're being serious, I may have stolen some things on impulse" the lamb took a delicate sip of water, acting innocent. He reached into a bag and retrieved a sealed jar "This was the first thing. The contents, not the jar, I compensated the potter. I've kept it a long time"

"Is this what you said you found?" Crowley asked, thinking back to when Aziraphale pulled him inside in the first place.

Despite already being jovial, Aziraphale's face lit up and he spoke in soft, excited whisper that made Crowley lean in and hang in his words "No, my dear. I found this cave" from a small pile of wood that did not mot seem to dwindle, Aziraphale added a few logs to the fire and coaxed it into new life.

The heat of it immediately soothed Crowley, and he was met with Aziraphale complaining that his eyes were closed. He forced them open and his breath caught in his throat. The walls were covered in simple paintings of animals, constructed by lines. The shapes of them followed the forms of the cave walls and in the flickering light of the fire, they almost moved. Crowley saw mammoths, horses, bears, aurochs, lions, and humans. The more he looked the more animals he saw, like someone had cataloged God's creatures. "Did you do this?"

Aziraphale almost seemed offended, but not for his own sake "Of course not. This is human work. Demons don't have _this_ imagination. Or any. Humans though, they're a wonder"

"I think you've got imagination" Crowley shrugged. He didn't see a point in vocalizing his agreement as far as humans are concerned, It was a given.

"Why's that, dear boy?"

"Well I don't think much of heaven or hell would be so enchanted with these walls" He elaborated, reaching out to touch a mammoth before hesitating. "These… are very old."

"Older than makes sense" Aziraphale agreed, sounding more delighted and fascinated than confused. "A few years before Adam, Lilith, and Eve, as far as I can tell"

"How is that possible?" Crowley asked, troubled by the amount of lies this exposed.

"_If only_" Aziraphale lamented a little too theatrically "there was _something_ we could _ingest_ that is known for granting _wisdom_" he was holding the jar again, wiggling it in the air.

"You didn't" Crowley said in disbelief, taking the jar and pulling off the top. Inside was an Apple, cut up and preserved with cinnamon and more than one demonic miracle. He closed the jar quickly, inhaling slowly. Lord grant me patience. "You've stolen an Apple from Eden?"

"Well there's actually two in the jar"

"You're mad"

Aziraphale leaned back slightly and frowned. The exclusion didn't suit his face. "First: Chaos is my job. Second: they were just sitting there in the tree. After the third day, they were all I could think about, so I went back and I picked two. I couldn't stand the thought of all those apples never sharing what they know. I couldn't stand not knowing"

It appealed to Crowley. He was curious by nature too. But it was dangerous for him to attempt that. He could have died. "What did you find out?"

Aziraphale looked up "Hmm? Oh, I've never actually.." He coughed and gestured at the jar. "Eaten any."

"Why not? You took it on impulse, I thought you'd eat it on impulse too" he put the jar down between them. What would happen if Aziraphale did eat it? Would Crowley get to see? Just to know.

He fiddled with the hem of his tunic. "I may have decided that it wouldn't be so…" he swallowed "fun. Alone, I mean. These Apples have never been experienced alone"

Crowley huffed a laugh at first, for half a moment, before realizing Aziraphale was serious. He held his hands out to the side in disbelief. "C'mon. They've only ever been experienced once, lamb! By humans! _Lord_, you're too bold for your own good"

"Don't talk to her about me" Aziraphale reprimanded in hushed tones. "You idiot angel, do you mean to have us caught and killed?" He huffed and crossed his arms, turning away to look at red ochre silhouettes of hands that arched to the left of him on the cave wall where it curved into the ceiling. From Crowley's angle, the shape the hands made almost looked like a wing extended outwards, parallel to the sky. "I thought that you might like to have your answers. Without having to ask any questions at all. I'd like to have mine. But my mind isn't in a good place when I'm alone. Hell's curse, I'm sure. I can… well I rather think in your company, I could put all that down and just. Think about the world. Instead of me. Instead of hell.. This surely doesn't mean you must, if you have any reason at all to believe She may find out. Or any other reason you may have.." He trailed off, awkward and nervous.

"Oh" it wasn't eloquent. Nor did it mean anything, he realized, so sent the water from his cup back to Aziraphale's water skin and took the jar back into his hands. He opened the lid and, experimentally, poured just a little bit of the thick apple jam-like slurry into his cup.

"I intend to drink whatever you don't" Aziraphale informed him in a cheerful voice.

"_Oh_" he poured as close to half a jar as he could determine into his cup. It smelled, of course, like apples and cinnamon, but also, undeniably, a lot like alcohol. "Lamb are you trying to get me drunk on fermented Apple of Knowledge?" He intended to put some apprehension into his voice, but his tone was fully amused.

"Really, dear, why would I do something so dastardly. I'm trying to get _us_ drunk on fermented Apple of Knowledge" he grinned wickedly with his cherubic face and grabbed the jar from Crowley. "To the world!" He said quickly and put the jar to his lips, tilting it back.

"T-to the world" Crowley said before taking a tentative sip.

And neither of them could seem to stop drinking until the cups were empty because at least for Crowley, it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He could hear Aziraphale tapping the jar. Eventually, the demon leveled his head and opened his mouth to talk, but it took a few tries before any sound came out. "I… I have never had a better beverage. But I… aside from overwhelming joy at just… the taste of it, I don't feel anything. I don't know anything new." He put the jar down and tapped his chin, humming in thought.

"Maybe it…" Crowley peered into his cup, unable to will it tho refill "takes a bit to kick in?"

"Could be so. I do feel warm but it may just as easily be the fire" Aziraphale pulled at the collar of his tunic fussily. "I just hope that it hasn't turned toxic. It didn't very much taste like something that will kill us"

"Seems like something to have worried about _before_ we drank it, doesn't it?" Crowley inhaled slowly, his eyes closed and his hands coming to press together at the palms under his chin. This was sure to be a long night and he was under no circumstances prepared for it.

"How… how did you get your leather so white?" Aziraphale asked, fascinated eyes set on what was visible of Crowley's tunic past the white fur.

He hummed and looked down at himself, moving the fur aside to see the bleached leather "I don't actually know how its done. Saw a little clan of humans wearing the stuff and I liked it so I miracled myself some"

"You like that?" He asked incredulously, "you don't mind that it never feels the same as the real thing?"

Crowley narrowed his eyes "now, what does that mean, then?"

"I prefer clothes made by hand" Aziraphale said, running his fingertips over a black feather embroidered on his tunic. "That's why I sat with as many different human stitchers as I could find and I leaned to use an awl." He smiled and wiggled proudly "I'm rather proud to have taken the time on it"

"Oh Well that doesn't sound too bad" Crowley said, because it was safer than telling the demon that he was entirely endeered. "What, though, are you looking to start wearing white? Your lot let you do that?"

"Of course not, dear boy, why I'd never… would heaven prohibit you from wearing dark clothes?" He looked almost concerned.

"Well no, not directly of course but well… dark certainly looks strange surrounded by pastels, doesn't it?" Crowley imagined the way they'd look at him if he wore black and suppressed a shudder. "I always just assumed hell was more strict"

"Strict in that happiness is prohibited within its walls, which, someone must have licked at some point, because you don't make a rule about something that specific unless it happened and Crowley," he paused to breathe in after his voice gained a note of dismay. When he spoke again, it was calmer but he sounded near tears "the walls are filthy"

Crowley leaned back to look at him with high brows. "Lamb, are you…" he trailed off because before he could get the word "drunk" out, the Apple hit him. There was a pulsing in his skull and the animals on the walls were well and truly moving now, not just to the beat of the flickering light. They were marching in a circle around the ethereal beings and Crowley could very nearly hear them. He squeezed his eyes shut.

A human, after ingesting something like an Apple of Eden, could expect to be shown great truths about the vastness of the universe. Crowley had a heavy hand in building the universe and thusly didn't need much revelation on that. He still saw stars. His mind brought him to a binary star system, he only realized when the light of it started to grow before it revealed itself to be two stars orbiting each other like an egg becoming twins. He saw the stars converge again and for a moment we worried that Star A had swallowed Star B. He couldn't shake the horrified feeling that the stars were putting each other in danger with their proximity. Until the shining light once again fractured in two, And he felt foolish for a moment having misunderstood perspective and orbit. He opened his eyes and he was back in the flickering cave.

He could see Aziraphale staring into the fire, and on his skin, Crowley saw Her fingerprints from when She sculpted him. Like the paintings around them, Crowley could follow the lines of motion and imagine the process of it. He could see that she had run her thumbs under Aziraphale's eyes, she spent time on his nose and his lips were formed with delicate precision. If he let his eyes unfocus, he could even see Aziraphale's true form. It had been hidden to him since the fall. He still looked regal and holy, his head was still a white sheep with an impressive woolen mane but the golden disc of his halo was shattered and every superfluous eye was gone and in their place, scars. Where he used to have two sets of flight wings, He had none. All ten of his hands were clasped idly and his feathers fluttered with the steady rise and fall of his breath. Thousands of years later, Crowley would see The Hierophant in Aziraphale's tarot deck and it would bring him back to this moment.

A million thoughts rushed by Crowley, about heaven, about the nature of angels and demons, about the pain he assumed was associated with falling, until these thoughts became abstract and conceptual. The animals on the walls danced in pairs just like the humans would in a few months, when they'd celebrate the coming of Spring with song and drink.

Above the fire, on the veiling of the cave was a circle drawn in the same red ochre of the handprints. He could almost imagine the circle representing the planet itself, how it looked from the cosmos. He could see Her work on it too. Every rock, every living thing hand carved long ago. Nothing could shake the feeling that the hands that sculpted the world had left it behind.

**C. 3200 B.C.,Sumerian City State Uruk**

Aziraphale had been haunted by the idea that the humans went about their short lives, living wondrous moments, dramatic scenes, and quiet days- all without the ability to make those stories outlive them, details and all. When you tell someone an anecdote, they may go on to tell another, but the details can't stay the same, they wash away in the tide of flawed memory. It wasn't humans who were specifically at fault for this, Aziraphale had the same trouble, losing precise wording before entire plot points. He wanted to preserve human stories like he preserved the Apples. Enjoyable 100 years after being picked. Ideally, they would last longer than a century, since there had already been around eight of them.

Aziraphale had spent these last seven centuries desperately trying to find a human soul willing and capable for the task of carving words into a visual medium for the first time. At least, for the first time in human history. Angels had their own writing and demons their messier version of it, but the vocabulary of it was lacking and one never found anything of interest written with it. Sentences were formed out of necessity instead of a want to convey emotion. Reading writings of heaven and hell never had the same feeling for Aziraphale as simply sitting around a fire with a group of humans, listening until the charcoal cooled. He was convinced that if Angels and Demons can write, humans can do it better, the way they employed words with reverence for the power they held.

As far as Hell was concerned, Aziraphale's efforts were going to help them control human thought. He encouraged this belief. Really, he wasn't so well suited to the archetype they wanted him to fill. Upper management had made it clear that their agent on the surface should be sly, malicious, and violent. The kind of returns they wanted were battles, subjugation, crime and power plays. These things did happen, of course, but without so much as Aziraphale's peripheral influence. After the second century, he had learned to claim these things as a success.

The world's first scribe sat before a clay tablet. She was familiar with using simple symbols to convey meaning, with carving into the clay, and with listening to suggestions. The demon that lurked behind her helped to create the alphabet, which he insisted was the necessary first step. Cuneiform looked like sets of triangles arranged on short lines. Scribe and demon alike lean in to review the marks in the slab that would set in motion lasting culture. "_Well_." Said the old one lightly "I suppose it's good enough to work".

The human let out a breath. "Now only to find a topic"

Aziraphale's mind wandered, for the millionth time, to red hair and golden eyes. "Write about the stars"

**3004 B.C.**

A demon stood against a wooden fence which held at bay the huddled masses of terrified Mesopotamians that watched a single family and pairs of animals board The Ark. His hands shook and he put them on the beam in front of himself to steady them. He had felt, for the past millennium, an ever-present rage toward God, but recent news brought Her to a new low in his eyes. The worst of the monsters he worked with couldn't have come up with a more horrific "punishment" for the mortals as this. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't drown out the overpowering terror that radiated from the crowd around him. A pair of adolescents directly to his right held each other and cried. Somewhere to his left, a toddler clutched their mother's skirt and a baby cried. Aziraphale was in the unfortunate position of feeling the full force of it. His eyes brimmed with tears and we wished he had opted to stretch the human's gender roles that day and wear a veil. Of course it would be the day he chose not to wear it that he needs it. He did like how the humans startled when forced with only his unnatural eyes to look at, though. That would all be ending very shortly. Of course, there was far more he would mourn the loss for than just the chance to confuse. All of those lives, all of those stories. How is it just and fair and holy that so many children would have their futures stolen from them. He's tense, and terribly upset, when he's tapped on his right shoulder. He looked and saw nobody looking back at him, everyone was still focused on the ark. Aziraphale sniffled and turned back to look forward, only to yelp and jump at the sight of a face and gold and red, all too close in his peripheral vision.

"Well now, lamb, I didn't mean to scare you," the angel smiled at him for a moment before he seemed to register the wet streaks on Aziraphale's cheeks. "Oh. Oh hun…"

"H-How can you be" his breath stuttered, strained, and it hurt. "Are you not bothered by this?" He got out through the panic he couldn't reason away, despite knowing it wasn't even his own fear he felt.

Crowley recoiled and for a moment made an expression of anguish "No! No, of course not, Aziraphale, look at me" when he had eyes on him, he started again "This is going to be the worst thing either of us have ever seen" he winced but Aziraphale could only guess why. Crowley wouldn't stop looking at him with sorrowful concern and it almost made Aziraphale angry. Concern should be saved for those truly in danger.

The demon pressed the cloth of his sleeves to his cheeks, trying to dry the tears that still spilled. It felt physically impossible to think clearly surrounded by all this pain. "Th-the whole civilization. All of the culture, the history. Crowley the _children_"

Fragile angelic composure shattered at the mention of the kids and Crowley openly wept. If someone in the crowd took notice of the two of them, Aziraphale redirected their eyes. "I know. I know" he fought against a tightening throat for air "I wish we had any control at all"

Aziraphale swallowed, feeling worse now from Crowley's feelings being added to the rest. "I, I rather think… well, wouldn't it be very _angelic_ of you to perhaps" he wished he still had someone to pray to, in order to beg for this to work. "Perhaps if you were to save the children, nobody could argue that's morally wrong of you without sounding morally wrong themselves. But if I were to help you, well, I'll just tell Beelzebub I was directly acting against God Herself"

"They'll see it as disobedience"

"Did they give you direct orders to let every person die?" Aziraphale waited until Crowley's head shook "well dear, how were you supposed to know that it wasn't her will that you save this children?"

Crowley looked at Aziraphale like the demon had just saved him. "Where do we start?"

Above them, the dark clouds thundered and Aziraphale remembered thinking about wrath a thousand years ago, standing on a wall next to the very Angel he was about to do yet another dangerous stunt with.

Aziraphale had gotten detailed directions from Crowley to a cavern he knew about less than a mile from the building site of the ark. It would be easy enough, he hoped, for the angel to lead the children here. It was spacious and Aziraphale took the time to inspect the alcoves and crevices.  
It wouldn't do to have water leaking in. Every crack, he imagined filled with hydrophobic particles, and he did this to the opening as well. Just to be sure he hadn't missed anywhere, he went through the process two more times. Then, he imagined that a breeze could and would always flow through the cavern, bringing fresh air with it.

He sat down heavily on a stone and sighed, resting himself against his knees. He took a deep breath, readying himself. If he let the emotions he picked up from the humans and Crowley that day remain in him unexamined, they'd surely rot inside his heart. When he exhaled his breath fully, he raised the floodgates, and every sense instantly overwhelmed, he couldn't hear himself screaming.

The two sat together, exhausted in their cave of miracles, surrounded by children and adolescents. The chattering had quieted as children passed around replenishing food bowls and water skins. Each ethereal being fed an infant, the older children helping where they could, while the young ones huddled by the caves opening, marveling at the wall of water, a window into their new oceanic world. A whale sang, a breeze ruffled Crowley's hair, and Aziraphale was in awe.

**2004 B.C. Autumn**

It had been 2000 years now since Eden was lost and the humans seemed to know. Perhaps, alternatively, the particular culture in this region always goes mad for a good harvest festival. Crowley couldn't decide which was more charming an answer. His body carried him toward the noise of one such party, getting rocked on his feet by waves of love that got stronger and stronger as he neared the settlement. He had made it into town just in time to see the women link hands and dance around the bonfire at the center of the action. He felt the beat of the drums before he realized he heard them at all and the way it shook him, combined with how every person in his sight is moving with it all served to overwhelm him at first. He stayed several feet from the edge of the crowd and watched the women dance. At least he tried to. From behind half the damn town, he couldn't see much of them at all, except for quick flashes of the tops of their heads. He tsked and took another step away, intending to start looking around for something to stand on, but he couldn't force his eyes away, not when he saw a white head of hair in the circle that span around the massive fire.

There was a tree close enough and he thanked god for it's placement as he grabbed an overhead bow and shifted his form to coil around the branch as a sake. From this new height, he could see more of the festivities. Seven figures looking in on the fire rose above the crowd and though he had originally believed them to be people on stools, he could now recognize them as statues. Folks all over Mesopotamia obsessed over statues just like them. When he saw the white hair again, it really was Aziraphale, hands linked with two human women. Crowley hadn't seen that cloudy hair so long before, and he hasn't seen Aziraphale in a dress either, but there Aziraphale was, with only her striking features separating the demon from the other women. Crowley felt rather silly having shown up wearing the wrong gender. Maybe he just didn't like the idea of having nothing in common between them.

When Crowley was human again- the mortals really weren't looking- she was in a dress too. She'd done it hundreds of times before and she had been waiting for a good moment to switch over anyway and this would get her closer to Aziraphale than any other way of looking. She set to tying up a portion of her hair to keep it from her face as she waded through the crowd.

Crowley was a believer in humans having free will and such, but when the circle of women broke open for the angel to join, she wasn't above making sure it was the person with their left hand clasped to Aziraphale's right who let go. All of the demon's focus was on the woman who frolicked ahead of her and Crowley had to catch a soft, plump hand that was waving aimlessly at the loss of it's partner. Crowley's hand, being far thinner than the human's hand, caught Aziraphale's attention and she turned without disrupting the movement of the circle. Crowley may have slowed this moment down with an absent minded miracle, just to watch Aziraphale's warm grin of recognition grow in the light of the bonfire the second their eyes met.

"_Crowley_!" Her name was said with buoyant, vibrant, delighted breath from the diaphragm. This was dampened only slightly by the way her pale brows drew together immediately after. "Angel what are you doing?"

Crowley stumbled a number of times in pursuit of her, all cheering, and drumming, and stomping feet, and crackling flame drowned out by her focus on Eden's Lamb. "What uhh.. What do you mean by that?"

"Dancing!" The demon cried with a confusing note of distress.

Someone among the drummers called out a command to the circle and Crowley's lose grasp was broken on the human's hand the same moment Aziraphale was pushed into her. It took Crowley a short breath to recover and begin running again, pulling Aziraphale with her. It really wasn't much of a dance, the beat of the drum couldn't change that. "I think this is more like running around a fire than dancing, lamb. I don't know any angel that wouldn't be caught dead ruining"

"You can't pretend that She would be alright with you doing anything at all for other gods"

If it wouldn't have made a mess of the scene, Crowley would have stopped dead, but as it was, she had to carefully remove herself and Aziraphale from the circle. She willed the crowd of men and children and married women to part for them and they did. She could hear, in some detached way, Aziraphale protesting the interruption, but the fear in her pulse pounding in her ears kept her from turning back until they were out of sight of the festivities.

"-terribly rude. My dear. Angel! Crowley!" Aziraphale lifted her voice until Crowley's dazed gaze was back on her. Her voice was much softer, but no less irritated and confused when she was sure she was being heard "Crowley please. What is this? I can understand opting out yourself, in fact I think that's safest for you, but-but forcefully removing me from an act of worship, Crowley, that's-"

"Worship? Wait" Crowley tensed to keep from shaking. This is not something that comes and goes without consequence. The two of them had finally committed a worse betrayal than the Apple in 3805 and Heaven would finally be rid of her. What horrors would Hell rain upon Aziraphale for the same crimes? "You're participating… fully, in all of this?"

There was hesitation and Crowley couldn't blame her. "I am" if her voice wavered, she followed it up immediately with "I would be a rather silly demon if I cared so deeply about an angel's opinion of me" her arms folded and she was closed off to Crowley.

"I didn't mean for it to sound so-"

"You don't have to explain yourself, Heaven will think what it will"

"I just don't understand. You know where the world came from, you were there" it was weird to know that Aziraphale was just like the humans that the other angels liked to joke about, cowering before and giving offerings to carved statues of figures of imagination like the very stone was alive with divine energy. It didn't make any sense coming from a literal divine entity. Sure, she wasn't so divine any longer… Was it possible that Aziraphale's sense for the presence of True Holy Power left with her sense for love? "Doesn't it hurt to know they don't exist? You know who made you" her voice was gentle, with a careful lack of judgement.

Hurt was clear in the curve of her eyebrows and her lips, in the wet shine of her lamb's eyes. It was clear, also, in the angry line above her nose. The muscles under her eyes that connected her cheekbone and nose contracted for a moment before relaxing again, the corners of her lips curled down, and her chin quivered for only a heartbeat. When she spoke, it was measured, cold, and fraught "Maybe I do know who made me, Crowley, but I also know who took my wings and cast me out. Who also tried to wipe out this very culture. Someone, though- someone else is out there! If there's a possibility of gods willing to accept me, they're already better at their job than the almighty"

Crowley flinched and spared a worried glance upwards, scanning the dark night sky for abnormalities. "You're taking the humans' words as gospel now? Lamb, how often are they right about something? What about- God, you must have someone you're meant to pray to in Hell. Someone you know is listening."

Aziraphale pulled her arm free of Crowley's hand "you can't know. You can't know how cold they all are down there. Or what it feels like to be severed." Her eyes narrowed and her voice gained a bit of venom "I beg your forgiveness for trying to build new ties. I had no clue it would have affected you so deeply"

"Come on, Lamb, you know I'm not trying to hurt you" she reached that hand out for Aziraphale again and stopped when the demon took a step away.

"No, you need to understand that you've insulted my judgment and you've insulted my faith" Aziraphale fussed with the dark shawl about her shoulders, trying to arrange it to cover her more fully " to-to think I was happy to see you" her nose scrunched up. She looked around and sighed "Listen, I have somewhere I need to be" it was the least effort Crowley had seen her put into a lie yet. "I'm sure you do to." She didn't so much as brush Crowley's skirt as she passed her by in the alley way. "Don't follow me."

**31 Anno Domini**

Aziraphale hadn't felt so sick since she and Crowley stood in a cavern full of hundred of crying children, watching the rain pour down and wipe away everything they had known. At least in the flood, he knew he wasn't to blame. "Maybe they'll listen to their own kind" Aziraphale had said, off hand, when asked about the success rate of his temptations. "If you could have a human agent up there, well thought could do something" he'd assured. It was lies and excuses, the first thing he'd thought of. He didn't think they'd do it. He didn't think Lucifer himself would hear it and put a child in a human woman. A human child really, she had been troublingly young. He didn't think any of it would go this far.

"Did you ever meet him?" asked Crowley who seemed to appear beside her, white veil strategically hiding wet skin under molten gold eyes. Aziraphale could feel that she had been crying, it radiated off of her with her grief and horror. Feeling Crowley's pain always hurt more than feeling it from the humans. There must be more room in her soul for it.

"I was the midwife at his birth." Aziraphale told her, hands gripping each other in front of her "They asked me for a name…"

"Oh lamb. Why'd you name him that?"

"Adam was the first name that came to mind" the human they talked about, only thirty one and all around a very decent man, screamed in agony and Aziraphale had to fight a sob. Nothing could keep her from remembering watching him grow up "Did… did you ever get to meet him?"

"I showed him every kingdom in the world." She said with no small amount of sorrow.


	2. Before Hellfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale learn about each other and grow closer over another melenium and a half

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that it's so meandering and like??? idk how to explain it but i feel like theres pleanty wrong with it that I should apologise for

**41 Anno Domini, Rome**  
It must have been something like chasing the old comfort of the Greek pantheon that brought Aziraphale to Rome after Adam. It wasn't exactly the same, and he had to learn the new names of the gods, but the spirit was there. Ten years spent in the service of Bacchus felt different than the century he had devoted to Dionysus. Mercury, too, had a slightly different temperament than Hermes, for whom Aziraphale spent a lot of time hosting travelers and stealing from the nobility. He still had love for them and hoped the gods felt similarly.

It was a shame that love was guesswork for him, when once long ago, in a kingdom nestled atop clouds, he had formed his whole identity around knowing about love. That was before humans though. That was before love had been revolutionized, analyzed by millions of souls, split into its components and studied, lived to its fullest. Aziraphale could only watch them in awe, severed from what they felt.

That might be why he focused so much on the temples and literature. He had spent time at the usual Bacchant temple that day, evidence of it in the form of a flushed, vibrant burgundy stain on his skin from his feet to nearly his knees. It was on his hands too, but less so, and only because, in his clumsiness, he had half fallen over into the grapes once or twice. He didn't mind it, it felt like good and proper worship to him, after Dionysus. Anything he could do to help a human get intoxicated, or get into the toga of the same sex, or very differently, into the clothes of the opposite. It was all done in service to an honorable god. When he encouraged humans in the direction of gluttony, or lust, or anything of the like, he told Downstairs that it was to ensure that they sin. Aziraphale thought, instead, that he was helping them live their little lives to the fullest. Without hedonism, without bacchanalia, humans missed out on the best of life. That's why he spent so much time in bars. That's why he was seated with a little plate of snacks by his elbow, feigning focus on a board game in front of him, listening closely to the voices of the patrons.

He listened for something to do to occupy himself. Immortality was a long and difficult fight against boredom, which he had been losing these past few years. Hope came in the form of Crowley's voice drifting to his ears from the bar and really it was the best thing that could have happened to him. He was standing before he was sure where the voice had come from, but it didn't matter because he moved to the angel on instinct alone. Delightfully, Crowley was found at the bar, a full jug in front of him. Perhaps for them, that full jug could provide a small reminder of their first bout of social drunkenness. They’d need at least six jugs to come close to that experience. One was sure to give them a nice buzz. A second, which of course would be Aziraphale’s treat, would make it even nicer. "Cowley?" He called with a fondness that was much too obvious to be hellish.

Crowley was dressed for a party, with a festive golden laurel wreath about his tragically clipped hair, and a pretty silver winged serpent brooch. Aziraphale assumed he hadn't been made aware of the religious overtones of either accessory, but he looked to the average Roman to be a devotee of Mercury. One with strange ideas about fashion and what constitutes a caduceus, but a devotee none-the-less. He didn't seem to be in the mood for the party he was dressed for. His back was curled farther than Aziraphale had seen him slouch, and his brilliant golden eyes were hidden behind tiny dark glasses. He was distinctly frowning, and he didn’t smile like he usually did when he looked up at Aziraphale. "Lamb. Fancy seeing you here. Been in town long?"

Aziraphale, with his hands coupled in front of him, began to fidget. "Ah, for some time, certainly more than two decades. What about you, dear, are you in for business?"

Crowley raised one eyebrow but offered no further emotional information. "Got here very recently." He turned back to his cup and jug and the task of emptying them, "Don't plan to stay long."

"Oh", Said the demon. He swallowed "I'm in Rome on orders from downstairs, but I spend little time on the assignment," he admitted, desperate to fill the silence "he's this little royal boy named Nero,"

"We don't talk about work." Crowley said and it was dark and heavy, with no room for debate. It was fact and law, spoken in a tone that only angels can use to speak law into existence. Aziraphale resigned to follow this new rule, as long as it was still fresh. "Is this what you do with your free time?" Crowley drove forward, looking to Aziraphale's wine-stained calves and feet.

He instantly knew what he was talking about, but, of course, Aziraphale followed his gaze anyway "hm? Oh, yes, I make wine. I also help in the temple's vineyard"

Crowley regarded Aziraphale, dressed in dark dyed layers and decorated with trim and jewelry with motifs of grapes and leopards. "Do you follow that god of debauchery these days, then?"

Aziraphale sat in the barstool next to Crowley, grabbing a cup and filling it. "I'll buy us another when this is done," he promised, before focusing on the question "Yes, and his Grecian counterpart before, for a very very long time. He's gentler in Greece, I wonder if I can find his followers there still."

"Balgus, gentle?" Crowley made a disbelieving sound "hard to imagine"

"Bacchus" Aziraphale corrected " and he's Dionysus in Greece. He loves wine and food, and he consoles the distraught. He has a fascinating relationship with gender. When he came of age and became a god, the one thing he asked of Zeus-"

"Gods are granted wishes?"

"Hush" Aziraphale frowned disapprovingly "The one thing he asked for, was to be treated as and called a man, and for his name to be Dionysus"

"That rather sounds like two things" Crowley cracked a small smile that, to Aziraphale, felt like victory.

"The point is that he wasn't _born_ like the other male gods" he held a hand towards Crowley with an expectant expression, waiting for him to convey the same excitement.

Crowley frowned again, but it was more confusion than anything else "You weren't born different, neither of us were"

He sighed but pressed on "No but most of our lives have been spent among people who for the most part _are_ what the midwife says. At least, most of mine has, I don't claim to know your age. So, functionally, in all the ways that matter, we _are_ different. I think it's all quite lovely. We're not different from _all_ humans, just most. But there _are_ some like us. I saw people find the language to express that they didn't fit so neatly in their assigned body thanks to him. Without the example, they have a harder time seeing it. Dionysus, just by making his request to switch over, just by existing as he is and having his story told, he introduced people to themselves. That's why I follow him. He enriches the human life."

The smile was back and it was fonder "Your goals sound far too… well, just don't write home about those more pure urges"

"I'm a demon, I have no pure urges" Aziraphale protested obligatorily "my work serves to sever humanity from the kingdom of your god"

Crowley poured the last of his jug into their cups "I can't say for sure that I want another one of these"

"Well" Aziraphale's fingers curled around his cup "I've been meaning to try Patronus' new restaurant. I hear he does the most remarkable things with oysters"

The expression the angel made was hard to read and the cursed glasses didn't help. "I've never had oysters"

"Oh! Well you _must_ let me tempt you-" he swallowed, his face warming "I- I don't mean in any sort of demonic way.."

Crowley leaned away from Aziraphale, head tilting back to look fully at him. The smile on his face was hard to miss, despite being as carefully controlled as it was.

**537 A.D., Kingdom of Wessex**  
The church was already consistently wrong and never open to criticism. This is what made life in service to it unbearable. That and how boring it was. He preferred the Judaic traditions. There was a time he didn't mind Christians at all, in their early days with their slightly misdirected worship of Adam Christ and all that oppression and fish doodling. They were like the children in the cave back then, wide eyes and in need of guidance, protection. Now they were so… convinced. So sure of themselves and what they've been told that none of them asked questions. He couldn't blame the individuals, certainly not the women and children who were already silenced so heavily. The bits humans picked up about the Great Fall emphasized the danger of wavering faith. The Church itself was punishing questions and It didn't sit well. It reminded him of just how narrowly he avoided Hell.

It really was so painfully boring and damp in this blasted existence, and Crowley couldn't so much as enjoy any moment around the humans, lest they think him a sinner. He didn't see the point of it. Why would She make everyone look better when they smile if nobody was meant to enjoy themselves? Why would She issue all bodies with nerves that can feel the soft touch of someone kind, if the only acceptable feeling was the warning sensation of pain? Why would She build the world and the life on it with such beauty, if there was only holiness in grey and brown? Why would She have designed reproduction the way She did? How did they explain love? Love was God's greatest gift to humans, the pure kind that says "I see and know you specifically and love what I've discovered". It was infinitely more meaningful than the blanket universal love for all things that Heaven and Angels spread with a broad brush. Human love was detailed and nebulous and grand. Crowley wished he could be like that. Humans lived too shortly, their moments too short. He couldn't ever come to know them to build that specific kind of love, not quickly enough to feel it before they're gone. Very often his attempts would be foiled buy his poor sense of time. He once met someone he thought he'd like to get to know, and he went to sleep. When he woke up, they were dead. Survived by their adult grandchildren. The other angels were, of course, never an option. If he had been more willing to believe in the existence of an immortal potential love interest out there who was entirely unaffiliated with Heaven or Hell or The Almighty, he'd have gone on a desperate search. Crowley felt compelled to learn love, but nobody seemed safe to speak to. It was incredibly isolating, especially when, in his travels, he was hit by heavy flashes of love. It felt like the sun from behind clouds to bathe him in heat and light. It made the fog and the chill of his armor worse, by comparison. he'd felt it before but this time he could swear it was accompanied by music. But the way it reminded him of sunlight- well in some way that sunlight quality reminded him of Aziraphale. How could a demon glow like that? The sunglasses did help in Rome, and every brief encounter since. The radiance of him was less blinding through darkened glass. It had been well over two centuries since they had last seen each other. The last he saw him, Aziraphale had focused every bit of his energy into literary development. Crowley hardly knew what his toils were for or what they meant. All he could tell for sure was that he was writing constantly and desperately teaching every human that would sit and listen. He didn't pay very much attention to Crowley at that time, but he did smile when he saw him. And well, Crowley felt... The Sun. But he had already been feeling those waves of love before he even saw Aziraphale. So it couldn't be Crowley's love, it wouldn't make sense, how would his heart know Aziraphale was around before him? Could he just… smell his specific demonic energy? It didn't explain why the waves of love felt so distinctly like they came from somewhere outside of Crowley's body. Localized, if Crowley's memories were honest with himself, around Aziraphale's body. So the love he felt, it came -from- Aziraphale. That must mean that demons can love. And that Aziraphale was close. The prospect of seeing him again felt like a satisfying justification for all his time wasted on this freezing hell island.

Crowley closed his eyes to focus on the imagined sun rays on his armor and tilted himself to gauge their direction and the music, which he reasoned must be real, got louder. He walked toward the feeling. He soon came upon a tent in the style the local Saxon pagans used. It was decorated, unsurprisingly, in painted magpies, and those symbols the pagans wrote with. They aren't arranged like words, which seemed against Aziraphale's nature. The tent was accompanied by a dampened fire pit, which showed signs of recent use.

There was a moment after he took off his helmet and fixed his braided hair where Crowley hesitated at the tent. Would this be the day the Demon finally does the responsible thing and cut Crowley out? He lived perpetually relying on Aziraphale's rebellious impulses for his chance at happy moments and he knew exactly how pathetic that was. God banished the wrong angel. Surely Aziraphale would, in his religious nature, stand stronger for Heaven and God. Aziraphale probably wouldn't have felt sorry for himself if he were in Crowley's position. Aziraphale would be smart enough to enjoy every moment under Her light. Aziraphale probably wouldn't think about his enemy more than his God. He wouldn't long more for another moment with this enemy more than he'd long for God's spoken word. Aziraphale would have had his priorities in order. Aziraphale would influence the hands of artists just for a chance to see the glory of God's creation, not to see his enemy's face when he isn't around. Aziraphale wouldn't be thrown into existential despair because he can't satisfactorily describe what beautiful eyes his foe has, what delicate lips. Aziraphale would've been the best of the angels. But God kept the worst of them.

Crowley let out a heavy breath, squeezing his eyes shut against the uninvited thoughts. Once he was composed enough, he knocked on the wooden beam at the top of the tent.

There was no hesitation between the knock and the answer, but the music did stop "you're welcome to come in, Crowley". His voice was light and playful. It lifted Crowley like wind under his feathers.

"How did you know it's me?" Asked the angel, beginning to circle the tent to find a way in. When he was back where he started, he spotted a row of ties in the canvas and he huffed. During the process of removing his gauntlets, he saw two soft hands push away an inner flap to deftly untie each pair of ribbons. Those hands then ushered him inside, where he was struck with the warmth and clutter of Aziraphale's living style. It made him smile. Aziraphale decorated his tent with unruly stacks of scrolls and parchment (some very old and very stolen), too many candles, shiny metal trinkets, and pretty little things. On tables stood statues and offerings, all things Crowley can now immediately recognize as Aziraphale's religious altars. In a corner were several looms and by a chair, on a carved wooden table, there was a locally made lyre. It must take demonic miracles for Aziraphale to move all of his belongings from place to place with him. His bed was dressed with soft furs. "I didn't know you slept"

"Ah, I don't" Aziraphale shrugged, but the way he went about fussing and arranging his things betrayed his nervous want for approval. "I do think it's a nice way to relax. It's a shame how few days of writing my corporeal form can handle before it begins to protest"

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a bit concerned by how casually Aziraphale described overworking his body which Crowley was convinced, to this day, still wasn't properly healed from losing his flight wings. "I don't think you're meant to be stretching an activity out farther than twenty-four hours. I like your place. It feels like you"

Fluttering hands stilled over one of the altars, heavy with pyrite, colors of fire, and figurines of several animals. A fish, a fox, a wolf, and, directly under Aziraphale's fingers, a snake. The demon smiled at him and the way his cheeks raised to obscure the very bottom of his oblong pupils burned into Crowley's mind. "Why thank you. I only keep my favorite things with me when I travel". He pressed his hands together in front of him, "oh, bother. I've been _terribly_ rude, you're my visitor. Would you like a seat? Some food or drink? That armor looks simply _dreadful_ to be under, surely it would be more comfortable without it,"

Crowley swallowed and shrugged; a surprisingly noisy affair. The near-undetectable cringe on Aziraphale's face at the unpleasant clatter drove him thoroughly into the decision to get the offending metal off him as soon, and quietly as possible. This didn't turn out to be such a quick process, but it did speed up when Aziraphale started pulling straps open for him where it would take contortion to reach. He willed for his gambeson not to reek like it, by all means, should have, and thanks to his divine standing, willing was all it took. He could breathe easier without the cold weight on him. The ever-present metallic sounds were gone and in their place was nothing but two sets of lungs steadily going about their usual business. Crowley wished he could have worn his sunglasses beneath his helmet. He wasn't oblivious to how much his eyes gave away. It was hard to remember not to be expressive around Aziraphale. Because Aziraphale had the most expressive face and hands Crowley had seen. Because Aziraphale's presence and the sunlight that radiated from him were overwhelming. In this tent with him, away from the water that hung in the air, Crowley could bask. Snakes really shouldn't go so long without the sun.

"May I um" Crowley gestured lamely at The Altar that had caught his eye, the one Aziraphale had instinctively tidied. "May I look at this?"

"I wouldn't mind, and I can't imagine _they_ would," Aziraphale motioned Crowley forward. When he spoke, each name was accompanied by an indication of their respective altar space "allow me to introduce you to Tyr, Bragi, Sigyn, Angraboda, Loki, and Idun". He smiled proudly at them. They did all look quite nice. Each section seemed highly personalized. The second altar was just parchments. The last was decorated with pressed apple blossoms and gold.

Crowley hummed his appreciation, resisting the urge to touch the polished rim of the glass bowl that made the base of the third altar "they look like art"

Aziraphale's shoulders wiggled in his delight "why thank you, dear boy. This lot is _much_ less formal than the Olympians, but I get the sense that they enjoy some care and pampering from time to time"

"What's the story with this fellow?" He pointed to that important-seeming altar with the pyrite. The wood of the table was painted with snakes entwined in a knot and symbols like a 90° angle open to the right.

"Loki," Aziraphale said fondly, his hands messing with a scrap of fishing net spread under the ash-laden offering plate "they're a liar and a thief, and when the world ends, it will be because of them."

"Oh," Crowley said, and he knew his eyes were too wide to be impassive. He swallowed and blinked and forced his expression into something steady "but what do _you_ think of them?". Much of his mind couldn't get past the foreboding apocalyptic prediction. The snakes on the altar were starting to make him sweat.

"I think they're a good mother and a good father. I think they're a kind and giving lover to their wife and mistress." Aziraphale indicated first that glass bowl altar, suspended by miracle above Loki's table, and then to the one he had referred to as Angraboda. Angraboda was a statue of a woman instead of a platform or vessel. She stood on the floor and was as tall as Crowley's hip. In her arms, she held smaller figures- a half skeletal woman who was dwarfed by a wolf tied with a ribbon. The most important thing, to Crowley, was the snake coiled around her body, huge head on her shoulder. "I think Loki helps people who need it. I think that some people need The WorldBreaker to come into their lives and tear it apart and burn it all so that they can grow and build it back up with stronger foundations. Others who need a patient and clever teacher or a parent or a lover might never meet the version of Loki that destroys the world. They'll meet The Mother of Monsters or The Husband of Sigyn or The Skytreader. The Truth Teller, often enough for a God who's also the master of lies." By the time he started listing Loki's titles, he was talking with his hands.

Crowley grinned "I love things that make you this happy"

Alright so that was embarrassing, he was embarrassed the moment he heard himself say it but it came out.

Aziraphale didn't seem to know how to react. He fiddled with that ring he's always had. His smile was nervous, or maybe just uncomfortable. "Ah. That's very… well, I suppose that is very on-brand for you and your heavenly thoughts. I would. I would er- well it isn't demonic of me to say, but I love to see you happy too"

Crowley blushed and he looked to the peak of the canvas ceiling to avoid meeting his eye "hhmf well uh…" he cleared his throat "what brings you to this kingdom?"

"Hm? Oh I… well I heard that there were Christians poking about the pagans" Aziraphale's voice was slightly sheepish. "So I came over to, well, keep the religion alive". He didn't have to explain further. Crowley could remember how Christian influence affected Rome. The dread on Aziraphale's face when he realized he was the last worshipper of the Olympians was physically painful to see.

"Then I suppose we're just canceling each other out" Crowley huffed "we could've stayed somewhere warm and dry"

"Well _you_ couldn't," Aziraphale said, sparing a nervous glance skyward "they'll know if you don't do your work, and I'd hate for them to hurt you."

"Will they now? I don't think there's a way to tell, after the fact. Doing my job, not doing it. As long as you're working too, it will be like I hadn't done anything at all"

"Well if you must know, I rarely work anyway. Hell is incompetent and doesn't check anything. I do as I please and stretch the truth far as I need when I report back"

"That's clever. I suppose I could just report on every good deed I perform"

"That should be more than enough, tell them about how you are with kids, that's sure to be heavenly" Aziraphale miracled two pitchers "Water or wine, dear?"

"Wine please" Crowley answered, watching Aziraphale hum and pour wine into two cups made from horns. "Do you ever think that maybe… maybe you don't belong with your lot?"

Aziraphale handed him a cup and took a seat, patting a carved birch chair next to him that hadn’t been there a moment before. It had a white sheepskin on it for cushion and when Crowley sat, he hummed his appreciation. "If by 'my lot', you mean the other demons, then Yes. All of the time. But if you mean pagans, then no. I feel a sense of belonging with them. Do you feel that you belong?"

Crowley sighed "no. Not with heaven, not with the Christians. I like the Jewish folks well enough, they don't take things at face value or pretend to know everything.”

“If you would like, I could keep a handle on things here. So that you can go and be with your people” Aziraphale offered, “You seemed so miserable when you arived”

"Oh, well there's certainly no hurry to leave" Crowley shrugged, “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

Aziraphale beamed “too long, dear boy, that is for sure. We must make more of an effort to meet up at least once a century”

Crowley opened his mouth to agree, but before his voice had a chance, there was calling from outside the tent. A desperate and young human, out of breath, was out there pleading for “The Witch” for help. Crowley raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale, “What’s that about, lamb?”

“I’m a witch,'' answered the demon simply as he stood from his dark chair. He crossed to the opening of the tent and said, “Clear the bed, would you dear?” before ducking through the canvas.

A short conversation played out past the tent wall and Crowley set about gathering the parchments and scrolls from the bed, which he found space for on top of other parchments and scrolls. It was done in time for Aziraphale to return with the human who had called for him and a second, very sick human. Crowley took an instinctive step forward, with his healer’s hands in front of him, but the young woman who had brought her friend for help took a defensive stance, eyeing his gambeson and scattered armor warily.

“He isn’t Christian, dear, he’s Jewish,” Aziraphale said softly, laying the ill man on his bed. Crowley was surprised by how true it felt. “ I need his help, if you’ll let him near. He’s my oldest friend and a better healer than me, he can be trusted”

The woman looked between Crowley and Aziraphale several times. “I don’t know what Jewish is. He looks Christian”

With hands still raised, Crowley said, “I don’t dress like them because I act like them”. He hoped his tone wasn’t too close to pleading, but nothing bothered him like not being allowed to heal a person.

“Look at his tattoo, darling, and his hair. He was born with that snake. I think Loki’s favor is with him” Aziraphale tried, and Crowley grabbed at his hair to look at the braid with knitted eyebrows. The woman relaxed her arms but stayed between Crowley and her friend. “Would a man who trusts a witch enough to remove his armor in their tent hurt either of you? I’ve known him for the whole of my long life and the only way he hurts me is with words”

The last of it wasn’t the easiest thing for Crowley to hear, but it granted him access to the sick man’s bed and for that, he couldn’t complain.

Crowley, though long since demoted to principality, was still the Archangel tasked with healing humanity's first wounds in Eden. Adam had slipped on a stone at the base of a waterfall and scraped his hands. He had cried like a child. It was the first pain humans had ever felt and he had no frame of reference or even the comfort of knowing that the feeling would pass. Crowley had been the one to soothe him. It was Crowley’s hands that had lain on Adam's cheeks and wiped away humanity’s first tears. He knew that crying had only been invented earlier that day, but not by who. If he’d have been told that it was Aziraphale, he’d have thought that sounded true. 4541 years later, he felt the same as he did then. He felt humanity coming to him for comfort like children to their parents and he felt at peace seeing the sick young man’s fraught brow relax. It only took an instant of contact for the illness to drain from him. His friend was on him in a moment, turning his face this way and that to assure herself that he was well. Crowley looked to the statue of Angraboda, cradling her children, and he smiled.

**861 A.D., Iceland**

Crowley had felt the itch for Aziraphale’s company the moment they parted ways. It didn’t matter that Aziraphale told him where he was going- that he could find him there any time he’d like. It didn’t matter that Aziraphale had shared with him his plans for the next five centuries. Crowley was convinced that if he gave in and crawled to him too soon, Aziraphale would _know_. If he spent too long at the heel of a demon begging for his company, then it would be all the easier for Heaven and God to _know_. Being in love with a demon was a secret best kept well past the end of the universe. If he was lucky, no soul would ever need to find out at all. The issue with forcing himself to stay away was the despair it brought. The world was exciting and artful and sacred when he was with Aziraphale. When he was alone, perhaps without the demonic haze Aziraphale might carry with him, he could see the world for what it was. He wasn’t blind to war and suffering and all of the dirt. He would have liked to stay in the world that glowed with promise.

He stayed by himself, mostly sleeping until he was sure Aziraphale had moved on past his first planned destination. When Crowley woke up from a decade long nap in 857, feeling more like a woman than a man, she miracled a new dress and headed directly for the second place Aziraphale told her to find him. She scoured eleven towns before she realized that every trace of the demon she found was too old for him to still be in the region. It was a huge disappointment, as the thought of finding Aziraphale again was what she had clung to for three centuries, but Crowley took it with a quick bottle. Still tipsy from the tavern, Crowley had unfurled that old map Aziraphale had drawn in Wessex and drew her finger from the roman numeral two to the three. She groaned. She’d have to go North. And she’d need a boat.

The journey from stop two to stop three was a bigger pain in the ass than the initial jaunt to stop two. Crowley had hoped to not have to go to stop two at all. The only acceptable thing about that shitty cold island was finding Aziraphale’s tent there and healing a human with him. She wasn’t excited to run to another shitty cold island. She’d have appreciated, also, something more specific than a region, but he understood the limitations of Aziraphale’s foresight. It was wishful thinking that Crowley thought she’d be able to find Aziraphale in the same decade she began her search.

Wandering around Iceland was worse than Wessex. Only in some ways, but Crowley wanted to be bitter so she convinced herself that the people were every bit as disagreeable as the Christians she was a ward of three hundred years ago. Of course, the cold was the worst of it. When winter hit and she had the misfortune of spending the odd night forcing her way through the snow, all she could think of was the first time she noticed the love that radiated from Aziraphale. She had convinced herself, back then in that painted cave, that the feeling had everything to do with humans. Perhaps it was the love felt by the humans who’d moved through the area in their migratory traditions. Perhaps it was the love of humans that might have painted the walls (which, if they had, it certainly could not have been as long ago as Aziraphale insisted). Maybe, even, it was Aziraphale’s love for human art. It seemed likely at the time and still plausible. Crowley’s working theory, at this point, was that Aziraphale held a rebellious love for all life. Like the angels, but better, because he was told not to but he chose to anyway. She thought it must be such a strong love, and so wide-spread, for her to feel it so overwhelmingly.

Looking for Aziraphale consisted of Crowley walking aimlessly, feeling for the rays and waves that would crash over her, that somehow nobody else felt, despite the force of it being enough to rock Crowley’s balance. There had been a few false alarms, close families and wedded couples Crowley passed too close by and felt something almost as strong and warm as Aziraphale felt from the distance. The hope is always short-lived, nothing human could imitate him for long. Crowley was convinced that not even the kindest angel radiated love that heavily, that unwaveringly.

It was the winter of 861 when she finally felt it for real. This time it -did- knock her from her feet, directly into the snow. She wasn’t down for long. She tore through the trees in pursuit of the feeling of sunlight on her face. She could feel herself getting closer, and the wooden tops of buildings poked above the forest, with the sun painting the clouded sky orange. She couldn’t fight the tears that fell past her glasses. Her boots hit the dirt path of the town, and with the threat of slipping on the snow gone she only ran faster. She came upon an overturned ship, held aloft by walls decorated with painted shields and inside, was Aziraphale’s voice, projected and enunciated like someone addressing a crowd, and in a familiar higher register. Crowley grinned at the sense that she and Aziraphale were in sync and It took three individual miracles before Crowley considered herself tidy enough to be seen by the prettiest thing on the Earth.

Opening the large door to the longhouse, imagining that none of the humans would have any reason to wonder who she was, she was quick to see Aziraphale. The demon was sat in a woolen over-dress overlooking a sea of children, telling them a story from memory. Crowley wished she hadn’t missed the beginning.

Aziraphale’s eyes fell on Crowley and she grinned at her, but she didn’t falter in the story she told "Now, of course, our kind, brave stable girl feared for her life as she stood there in the feast hall before everyone, dressed in her ten pristine shifts. She had never seen her betrothed, and all she knew to expect was horror. She held her breath, and the Lindwyrm slithered into the hall. The people all watched him in silence as he crawled, bringing all twenty feet of his body to the foot of his father the king. He had teeth as long as her hand but still, her resolve did not break.”

Crowley wondered, for a moment, if Aziraphale’s religious interest in massive snakes was meant as an insult. Maybe it was meant to embarrass her, but neither option sounded like Aziraphale. Crowley couldn’t imagine her love for pagan mythology as anything but genuine. Perhaps pagans themselves were obsessed with snakes. She had seen them on the roman devotees, twined around a staff and paired with wings in a symbol that felt too close to what used to represent the archangel, Raphael. Aziraphale was most likely drawn to Loki because he feels a kinship of a sort with the god, not because the god surrounded themself with snakes. Aziraphale prayed to Loki because they’re a liar, and a thief, and when the world ends, it will be their fault, but they’re a parent and a lover and a scholar.

“Through all of the ceremony, she stayed strong, and in her mind, she replayed the witch's instructions. It preoccupied her mind the entire night and in the commotion of being carried to the Lindwyrm's chamber, the only things she could worry after were the whips and tubs of lye and milk she had requested. Sure enough, to her overwhelming relief, all she needed was there. She was beginning to think she may yet survive. She wasn't awarded much time to think, he was turning to her the moment the door closed" Aziraphale cleared her throat and effected a languid, low voice “‘I bid you remove a shift, Lady' said the Lindwyrm. She steeled her nerves and responded 'once you have shed a skin, your highness, I might'. The great scaled head lifted from the floor to be level with her 'nobody has ever asked this of me' he told her. Refusing to back down, she said 'I am demanding this of you now'. His head swayed as he considered this before finally, he said 'very well' and he wriggled. With effort, the beast shed his first layer of skin. Twenty feet of scales lay in a pile and she removed her outermost shift and laid it atop the shed. She then, with haste, grabbed a whip from the pile and dipped it, base to tip, in her tub of lye. She whipped the wyrm, then, until his fresh skin was pink. When this was done, he turned to her and said, again, 'I bid you remove a shift, Lady.'. Her response was the same, 'once you have shed a skin, your highness, I may'. ' Nobody had ever asked this of me'. ' I am demanding this of you now'. 'Very Well'. And it all happened again, in the same way, again and again. Each would shed a layer and then she would whip him with lye until her arms were aching. She was exhausted, by the time he removed his ninth and final skin, and she, her ninth shift. She stood before him with one dress still on and regarded his heaving, raw, sore form and she wished she could stop. The witch had made clear that there would be a price to failing to follow her instructions. She coated the final whip in lye and struck him a few times more. When the whip was dropped, though her body shook from fatigue, there were a number of final steps. She wrapped her arms around his middle and, with all her might, dragged him into the tub of milk, where she washed him. She tried to stand but her knees hit the floor and her eyelids fell. _Still_, her resolve did not break. Once more her arms wrapped around his body and she hauled him to the bed, her final task repeating in her mind. Her arms stayed around him, and in her sleep, she held him, devoted even now to the ritual. When the guards built up the courage to check the Lindwyrm's chambers, they expected to see the monstrous prince sleeping suspiciously alone, as he was in the morning after all of his prior marriages. But instead, they saw the most astonishing thing. A handsome man lay in the bed, in the arms of his bride."

Crowley had absolutely no idea what to make of the story. It made her skin crawl, in some ways, with all that talk of shedding and whipping. But there was something to it that awed her. The way the girl never shied away from the snake. The way the girl had held him. She had missed the exposition regarding how the prince came to be trapped in that form, but it was clear that the bride had saved him. Maybe he had always been able to shift, only, one time he couldn’t shift back. Crowley had nightmares about that exact fate. She had a million questions, most starting with “_why_”. Why did she need the milk and lye? Why nine skins? Why was the stable maid chosen in the first place? Something told her there weren’t any real answers. What did the story mean, then? What was the lesson? The snake must have been an allegory, stories are always full of those, but an allegory for what?

The children babbled amongst themselves and Aziraphale made her way to Crowley across the feast hall, the beads, and pendants that hung between her two brass brooches shining in the light of the burning braziers. She was smiling and her arms were held out and Crowley panicked at the realization that Aziraphale wanted a hug. So soon after she told the children of a woman who saved a snake by holding it in her arms. It was easier to hide infatuation from a distance, that’s why Crowley had historically shied away from her touch. But it had been a lonely three centuries and the world wasn’t getting any warmer. Before Aziraphale reached her, Crowley opened her arms and stepped forward into the demon’s hold. Her body was soft against Crowly’s skin-and-bones frame and the fur on her shoulders was as cloudy and yielding as the wool she had given away at the dawn of the world.

“I’ve missed you, dear girl,” she said, voice quiet and elated. There was a pang of guilt under Crowley’s ribs. “This is a nice dress, where is it from?”

Crowley glanced down “Russ”. It’s where she had waited and slept until she was sure running to Aziraphale wouldn’t seem desperate. The women there grew their hair out beyond belief and wore braids long enough to necessitate tucking it in their belt to keep it from trailing on the floor. The hair is what Aziraphale was now fawning over, trailing her finger over the miraculously neat plaits. Her white curls were grown out too, half down her back, and she wore several intricate braids with metal beads. “I like your hair like this”

“And I like yours like this.” Aziraphale said, now moving the braid in her hands to see the colors of the light playing through the wine red strands. “It’s always so lovely long and this is… very impressive. Did it take a miracle?”

Crowley’s hands came to rest on Aziraphale’s elbows, because her back seemed too intimate “I woke up with it this long, more or less. Though it must have gained at least a foot since then”

“Astounding,” she said, and her eyes were on Crowley’s through the glass “would you let me see it out of the braid before you leave?” she sounded hopeful.

Crowley fought through a few unhelpful syllables before giving up on a verbal answer and just nodding.

“Wonderful. What made you decide to come here? I seem to recall you said something about northern islands being the worst places on Earth” her smile gained something teasing there that made Crowley’s human heart stutter.

“Well, I wandered around the Baltic looking for you for a few years first” that was more than Crowley had wanted to reveal.

Aziraphale’s eyebrows drew together and up, and the corners of her lips pulled down “My dear, I’m sorry. I thought I told you I was only going to be there for one century”

She might have done. Crowley’s memory of the night gets hazy a few hours after the humans left. Aziraphale was fond of the ‘ever-full wine jug’ trick. “Oh,” she said, feeling rather stupid. "Maybe we need to think about sobering up to communicate the important things sometime," she suggested with a smile.

Aziraphale pouted “But the -taste- of it, Crowley”

“I know but what’s worse? A few minutes of a bad taste in your mouth or you being the one stumbling around for a decade because you were too drunk to remember what I said”

She huffed in an overly dramatic way that denoted humor “Fine, But I’m going to complain about it”

Crowley smiled at her and immediately got a grin in return, and she watched Aziraphale bounce and sway in tiny motions. “It seems a little loud in here for your taste, now that the children are all talking,” she said, remembering how easily Aziraphale’s ears were overwhelmed. “Outside is cold as Hell. Is there somewhere we could go?”

“Well. There _is_ the store-room,” she turned, already walking towards the very back of the hall “We could drink something spiced and I can even warm it up for you. Poor thing, you must be so cold, come on dear girl." She opened a door in a wall that was only half as tall as the head of the hall, which held the throne. There were stairs on either side of the door, up to a platform at the top of the short wall. Crowley followed her inside and only had to duck to avoid hanging herbs. Aziraphale sat on a painted box shaped like a trapezoid and patted the space next to her. Crowley didn't have to think before she was obeying her. She watched Aziraphale pick up a bottle and hold it between her palms, eyes closed, and, it seemed like she prayed. To finish, she held the bottle against the inner sleeve of her left forearm. When she handed the bottle to Crowley, it was thoroughly warm.

"What did you do? 'Sthat how you do miracles now?" She asked because she wanted to know, but the genuine tint to her outward curiosity was dulled by her intent focus on getting the bottle open. It popped, and there was steam. Might've just as easily been from the pressure, but it kept on billowing up, soft and steady, into her face and warming her. "Bless your heart, lamb"

"Please don't bless me. At least, you know," she squirmed uncomfortably "not in her name? Please. But um. Thank you for the thought. And I actually prefer to think of this sort of thing as magic. I use magical tools for it now and everything" there was pride in her voice at that.

"Tools?" She repeated "what are those? You've got less with you than you did in Wessex. Are they your beads and pendants? Or, maybe, the brooches?"

"These are -fashion- dear" impossibly, she sat straighter, held her head a little higher, her eyes closed haughtily. A sly, silly smile broke out on her face, breaking the act with giggles. "Some of these pendants are religious, I'll admit. But for this -drink-, dear" the last two words had the inflection of an order given by a caring loved one.

Crowley took a happy sip, humming at the taste of alcohol behind the spices, and the way it pooled in her and warmed her from the inside.

"For this drink, I used runes to aid me."

"Those letters?" She asked, eyes scanning Aziraphale's sleeve. They were unmarked green, no symbols on them at all until the trim on the wrist, which, she supposed, could be an abstract representation of runes.

"Yes," Aziraphale reached next to her for one of many containers, opening it for the dried meat inside.

"Where're the runes, lamb?"

"Well, I may have tattoos…"

"Really?" Crowley's eyebrows raised and her tone and expression were familiar to the universe. "That's a surprise. I didn't know that could happen to our bodies"

"It can, rather well" she bit her lip and paired it with a nervous smile, "I had a few as early as last time we met"

"And you didn't tell me?" she shouldn't keep her eyes from darting all over Aziraphale's body, but her skin was covered save for her face and hands.

"I didn't want to bring it up when it wasn't natural in the conversation. That would have been strange of me. It seemed almost... Well, we have been rather impersonal with each other. I didn't want you to think I was offering you a tour of my skin." She winced at her own wording. "I'm only making it weirder"

"No, no, I get it. It's so hard to know where the line is. I mean. The line we haven't already crossed. No return" Crowley took another sip to distract herself from the intent way Aziraphale leaned toward her.

"No return? Crowley, what do you mean?"

"Well somewhere between us there's a line we can't cross, I'm sure of it. There has to be a point where heaven and hell both notice us. Notice our… dynamic. I don't know where that line is. I don't know what we'd have to do to cross it. I don't know what we have to do to avoid it." Crowley clasped her hands around the bottle, and Aziraphale removed the fur from her own shoulders to put on Crowley’s.

"I'm too warm anyway" she excused. "The line. Do you mean like s-"

"I don't know what the line is Aziraphale" she emphasized and whined each word. "Please don't speculate- not out loud"

"Don't you think it's worth trying to make a list of plausible dangers? We can't do that if I don't guess where the line is"

"Well, I'm willing to bet the line is far before sex!" Crowley said quickly.

Aziraphale widened her eyes and put a hand over her heart "_Sex_? I was going to say 'soliciting each other for miracles'"

"Hhkk" Crowley choked "oh no, really?"

"No dear, I was going to say sex. I was _hoping_ to ruffle your feathers" she smiled and her eyes drooped to make the lashes flutter. "But in seriousness? We really ought to be careful in all the ways they could catch us. There _are_ logs of our miracles"

"It's very bold that your instinct is to make future meetings possible, and not to end this… arrangement entirely." Crowley fiddled with the bottle in her hands "should I be flattered?"

"I think not. The world's only doubly-blasphemous, giant-worshiping, pagan demon thinks you're fantastic company. I don't know what it says about you"

"Perhaps it says more about you" Crowley countered reflexively, her mind reeling at the compliment. Fantastic company. Aziraphale was really happy to see her. Even after she dragged the mood of the conversation to its knees. "Where are your tattoos?"

"Hm? Oh, I've got one on this arm" she tapped her left arm "It's Loki's rune, I used it for the bottle because they're the god of fire. I have a few sheep too, with different styles. Some of them are so old now. The humans like drawing animals like knots and I think they’re lovely. I have a few lines of poetry and sigils. They’re all rather small, I want to leave room for more in the coming centuries. I can’t wait to see how humans grow in this craft. Like food, like literature, like painting. Art just keeps changing. The way living things change. If things that never change aren't truly alive, something that, by its nature, never stops changing must have some life to it.”

“It’s the same with clothes and makeup and hair" Crowley added "every little bit of their cultures. It isn't just time, either. Travel for long enough in any direction and you're in a new world altogether. And the fifty years it takes to find your meandering way back to where you started, it's already changed"

Aziraphale shook her head with a furrowed brow "no, it couldn't possibly happen that fast”

“It can and it does!” her lips curled in amusement “if it takes me 50 years to find the land I started my journey in, it takes you 50 years to pick up fashion trends that have already come and gone. I think it’s because you make it all yourself and you have delayed taste”

“I am _very_ fashionable. The clothes I make suit me and my taste is not delayed. If anything I am ahead of my time”

Crowley grinned “if I look out there, into the hall, will there be a single person dressed like you other than the very oldest among them? Will I see young girls, and mothers, and women in the middle of their lives all in dresses just like yours?”

Aziraphale shifted from her right to her left “Well maybe in fifty years, the clothes the young women wear will have grown on me”

Crowley laughed and she didn’t miss how it made Aziraphale smile.

Later, long after the sounds of life outside the storeroom door dispelled- humans all having gone to bed- the two still sat together, close enough for their knees to occasionally knock together. They passed the spiced cider between them, and emptied the same bottle six times over. At some point, Aziraphale had taken Crowley’s braid in her hand and gently began to unweave it. They talked about the art they had seen and the stories they had heard since last seeing each other, about what the thought the humans might do next, and, as they always inevitably do, about religion. To Crowley, it felt like coming home. There was a thought, though, that kept resurfacing the drunker she got and it would forcibly pull her from the comfort of the conversation and into cold harsh dread like the winter’s storm outside the hall.

“How um… how did it happen? What made the prince a snake?” She asked, when the thought hit during a lul.

Still playing with Crowley’s hair, draping it over her lap to brush through it with her fingers, Aziraphale hummed “Oh The Lindwyrm? He was born that way, dear. His mother and father were desperate for a child, but they couldn’t conceive, so when a which offered her help, they agreed. The witch told the queen that two roses would grow in the garden, and if she ate the red one, she’d have a daughter, but if she ate the blue one, she’d have a son. She told the queen to under no circumstances eat both roses, but when the queen ate one, it was so delicious she ate the other without thinking. The Lindwyrm was a result of that”

“Oh,” Crowley said, and because she was drunk, she didn’t stop herself from saying, “If one day, I turn into a snake and I can’t change back…”

“Well I don’t think that could happen. But if it did, you have a which willing to find a way to help you”

“I don’t want to be shed and whipped,” she said pitifully.

Beside her, Azirahale cooed “Angel, I’d try everything before I’d try that”

**1636 A.D.; England**

Since Iceland, the two of them had been seeing each other at least twice a century and every Aziraphale saw the angel, the world seemed brighter. Receiving letters stamped with snakes, delivered by miracle, always sent a rush through him and he was always sure to respond with a magpie-stamped letter of his own the same day. He saved the wax seals Crowley sent him in a carved box under his writing desk. Just 35 years before, they had stood together in The Golden Globe and watched Hamlet deliver his soliloquy for the first time, flipping a coin for Scotland.

Aziraphale had received word of the burning of Agnes Nutter first through his network of witches, who all mourned the loss of the best diviner the world had yet seen, and second from a concerned angel, who always wrote when he heard of a persecuted witch, just to be sure Aziraphale was safe. It was from Crowley’s letter that, through tears shed for his fallen peer he never got to meet, he read of the carnage she had wrought upon the village. There were no survivors. It seemed he worried that Agnes had been Aziraphale, and whatever infernal event that killed the townspeople must have been the final defensive blast of hellfire of a demon discorporated. There were scratched out sentences and mentions of roofing nails for which the angel provided no context, but he ended the letter with a plea. He said he would be on his way to the site of Agnes’ murder and he asked for Aziraphale, if he was still alive, to meet him there.

Aziraphale had already been considering going there, to pay respects to a master, to curse the soul of whatever cowardly witchfinder killed her. He was packing before he even finished Crowley’s letter.

Approaching the town, Aziraphale was nearly brought to his knees by the overwhelming fear and pain that clung to the buildings, and the earth below his feet, and the very air. He looked down the main street, past the horror of the scene, to where Crowley was, a beacon of red and white among charred wood and bodies. With the sun in its low spot in the late afternoon sky, Aziraphale could see the light of it glinting off of the angel’s halo, which stays hidden beyond the veil that separates this world from all others. The disk of gold didn’t move when Crowley lifted his head at the sound of footsteps.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley looked like he wanted nothing more than to run to him, but he stopped himself, looked to the ground and stepped carefully “Don’t move, I don’t want you to step on anything”. Aziraphale stood and watched the angel’s gangly body hop and skip toward him. When they were closer, he said, “I’m glad you’re okay”

“Oh, dear boy, you know I’m careful. I haven’t died even once in all these years, so why do you still worry?”

“Because they won’t leave witches alone. There are some scary things written in the bible about witches, lamb. People are dying over it” He looked around them, sick at the sight. “How could something like this happen?”

Aziraphale looked to the center of the mess, the epicenter of a strong blast. It smelled like fireworks, and strewn on the floor, lodged in the buildings and the bodies, where thousands of roofing nails. “She must have been prepared for it. She’d have known what was coming. They say nothing surprised her.” he began to walk around the crime scene, looking for a militant corpse to direct his hatred towards.

“All these people…” Crowley frowned deeply and his breath shook.

“Every one of them willing to _kill_ the greatest mind of their generation,” Aziraphale said, perhaps a bit defensively. He was just sick of losing his people. It almost felt good to see some loss on the other side of the conflict. To see that his people can hit back, take the killers down with them. It made him feel sick with himself.

“Exactly why I worry,” said the angel without a moment’s hesitation, shocking Aziraphale. “Are we counting Skakesphere in their generation?”

Aziraphale’s shoulders fell and he nodded.

“She sounds like an amazing person,” Crowley said as he watched Aziraphale wander the grounds. “Do you want to talk about her?”

“She was a diviner, you know, prophecies and such, the sort of thing I’ve always wanted to be good at. She must have known everything, I don’t know how she did it. I only ever heard her prophecies second or third hand but she’s never been wrong yet. If… gods imagine the knowledge this world could have gained from her if only they let her _live_!” Aziraphale cried, kicking at the char and dirt at his feet. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he sobbed when he looked to where Agnes last stood. He felt awfully embarrassed and it got worse when he felt a gentle hand on his back. Crowley was behind him, patiently comforting him. “I’m sorry”

Crowley pulled away “What?”

“I’m sorry” Aziraphale repeated, sniffing. “I’m being terrible”

“Hey, don’t” his hand was back on him “Listen. Lamb, listen to me” a white glove rested on Aziraphale’s wet cheek and guided his face to look at him. “I can't imagine how painful this is for you to see. I know how alone you feel with so few pagans left. How could I blame you for morning her? She's your people. I don't ever want to hear you apologize for how you feel again, imagine what Hell would do to you if they heard" Crowley's voice gained something authoritative "am I understood, lamb?"

Aziraphale swallowed and nodded, moving a hand up to pat Crowley's. "You're right, Hell would have my skin as a rug"

"Oh, sweet boy" Crowley tucked a white curl behind Aziraphale's ear, but it was too short to anchor there and just bounced back into place. "They wouldn't want a shorn lambskin rug"

"Ha" Aziraphale laughed and wiped the tears from his face.

"What were you looking for, lamb?"

"Oh" Aziraphale swallowed and took a deep breath to compose himself "well there's um. Where there's a burning, there's a hunter. I want to find him."

"I'll help. What do I look out for? Will he be in uniform?" Crowley asked, pulling away and already scanning the bodies.

"Well aren't you just heaven's best gift to this world" Aziraphale cooed and squeezed his eyes shut at the embarrassment he felt. He could hear his own love in his voice and it was humiliating. "He might be in uniform. The trouble is, he'd have been…" he took several steps toward the clear spot in the center "he'd have been closest to her of anyone. Close enough to light the fire himself. He's probably gone…" he trailed off when his eyes fell on a pristine hat sitting upturned in the carnage, the only thing left unburnt. Another five careful steps and he pulled up the hat, a white bar in the lining catching his eyes immediately. "Property of Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer. Ah" Aziraphale smiled at the hat and turned to smile at Crowley. "I've found him"

Crowley eyed him warily "have you then? The hat is all you need?"

"Oh, his name is more than enough. The hat is almost overkill, far more than I could have hoped for"

That's good," he said, shifting "May I ask, then… what do you need it for?"

"I intend to curse this man's immortal soul" Aziraphale answered simply. "And for good measure, I'll find him in Hell."

"Oh" Crowley blinked. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

He blushed and fiddled with the hat on his hands "Really dear, you've already been very helpful already. I'd have spent much longer crying of you weren't here. I don't want to make you help me with my magic"

"Nobodies making me do anything. I'm an angel, I can't be forced. Just tell me what you need to be done, I can't imagine cursing a soul is as easy a spell as warming a bottle of cider"

Aziraphale sighed and smiled "I suppose if you could find a large patch of clear dirt, I could gather what we need and we'll be done and out of here in a jiffy"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sssssooo theres gunna have to be a third chapter
> 
> a third chapter which will be longer than either of these first two
> 
> so it'll take like,,, a whole ass while, y'all, I'm sorry.   
please comment if you like it so far, I've been writing pretty blind for a while I don't even know if this shit makes sense to anyone but me? Cause my friend who was going to beta read has been too busy the whole time and I am absolutely useless at reliably guaging my own work my bad bad monkey brain just says "You made this? Ha, gross"


	3. Before Armageddon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from the fallout of 1862 to the realization that they've been raining the wrong kid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's real long, folks and it gets,,, kinda almost steamy? there's talk of masturbation and crowley catches Aziraphale in the act and also they're pretending to be flirting in character as the nanny and gardener it's a little weird

1862 A.D.; London

At the first sign of light streaming in through the Eastern window of his bookshop, Aziraphale rose from his seat at the desk in the cozy, hidden back room and set about gently closing each book and returning them to their places. The oldest of them was one he had bound and written himself, composed entirely of the Elder Futhark alphabet. It was one of his personal historical accounts. He knew that if he hadn't written it all down, every time his mind would return to the memory, the very act of remembering it would mangle and rewrite it. Whenever he forgot a detail or a decade or something funny Crowley once said, all he had to do was find the right book from the right era. He was comparing his written account of a story of vocal tradition to its counterpart in The Poetic Edda. Memory worked like the vocal tradition, in Aziraphale's experience, but the storyteller and audience remain only him.

He trailed a hand along a shelf, directly under the spines of his favorite first editions, on his way to the cluttered kitchenette. He smiled, in particular, at one relatively new book by a talented and emotionally honest author by the name of Hans Christian Anderson. The Little Mermaid was his favorite of the nine tales in the book, but the love described in it was of a sorrowful kind that settled in his chest and made him think too long and hard. Humming to himself, he cooked breakfast and separated a portion off of his plate for the gods with a soft prayer. For himself and Hermes, he brewed a morning tea. “I’ll be seeing him today”, he said to his altars with a smile, thumb brushing one of Loki’s carved snakes. He sat with the gods while he ate, and when he was done, he opened his wardrobe to sort through the dark fabrics inside. “Everything he’s commented on is out, so” Aziraphale worried at his lip “so that means everything he’s seen me in so far. It’s all too… vintage. He hates that.” there was only one suit sewn recently enough for Crowley to have never seen it, but parts of it were made with that Hell’s Dress tartan he had designed and woven in bulk before he found out how Crowley felt about tartan, and the fashion of it must have gone out at least twenty years before. The demon whined a distraught little sound that would have humiliated him if anyone had heard it. With nothing better to wear, Aziraphale dressed and put on his gloves and hat. By his front door, he tapped his fingers on his cane anxiously. “It’s only been ten years. He’ll only want to go for lunch, that’s easy”, he told himself, before he opened his door and started his walk to St. James’ Park.

In the water, a black swan swam to meet a white one at the same moment Aziraphale strolled up to Crowley’s side. His red hair was short again, his glasses now hid his eyes even from the side, and he was frowning. It felt like their meeting in Rome when Crowley wore glasses for the first time. Still, Aziraphale adjusted his waistcoat and prayed that Crowley would finally like what he wore. “Hello, dear boy” he greeted lightly.

As far as he could tell, Crowley did not turn to look at him. “I need to ask you for something”

“Oh” Aziraphale swallowed “well, whatever it is, Angel, I’m sure I can-”

“I can’t say it out loud. Walls have ears. No, trees have ears. Or rather ducks have ears” Crowley made a face “… er… do they actually? Must do, how else would they hear other ducks?”

“Crowley, please”

The angel’s jaw clenched and his gloved hand raised, a folded paper between his forefinger and middle, and after a moment, Aziraphale took it and opened it. Messily scrawled on the parchment was the horrific word “Hellfire” and as if the paper burned him, Aziraphale dropped it. “No!” he yelled, hurt and scared “No, I refuse to help you- help you _kill yourself_ Crowley!”

Crowley scowled “ ‘sssss not why I want it. I need insurance”

“Insurance!” Aziraphale scoffed. “I cannot believe you. What you’re asking me- the scope of this weapon! I’m not an idiot, Crowley! It's dangerous enough, what we do. All of this… fraternizing. If our superiors find out...”

“-Fraternizing?” he hissed the word, disgusted by it, or maybe by the knowledge that the word was most commonly followed by the words "With the enemy". Aziraphale could never hope to spot the finer details of Crowley's expression with his most emotive feature locked behind tinted glass.

There was guilt in him like a weight on his diaphragm, but he ignored it “Yes, Crowley, we fraternize”

“Well I don’t need to _fraternize_ with you, Lamb, I have plenty of people to _fraternize_ with. I don't need you”

Aziraphale couldn't remember ever being so angry with him. Crowley had never terrified him so fully. The word lamb had never sounded so much like an insult on the angel’s lips before. “ yes well, the feeling is mutual” Aziraphale folded his arms and turned, storming away as the paper lit itself ablaze on the pond’s surface “Obviously!”. Behind him, he heard Crowley mock his last word, but he didn’t look back. He pulled at his scarf as he walked, face hot at the memory of how much he wanted Crowley to like it. He couldn’t understand why Crowley would do something so stupid and destructive to their… arrangement. Why would he want to… Had there been signs? Aziraphale sorted through his memories of Crowley, searching for something worrying. What would make an angel want to die? Was Heaven to blame, or Aziraphale? How would an angel who wants that act? Apparently, they drink more than they eat, they circle around people they talk to, they slouch and sprawl and slither and smile like a trickster god and do all the things that Crowley does.

A bell rang, pushed by the door when Aziraphale entered the space he had been curating to his taste since the end of the 18th century. He had been established in the city as a woman at the time and Crowley had been kind enough to pose as her husband and buy the building under the name “A.Z. Fell''. He left finding a name to fit the initials to Aziraphale, and “the Fell family” has been running the shop since. Surely soon, he’d need to find a new name and persona, a new birth date and all. Usually, he placed his birthday on Lokabrenna, the day Sirius A and B were closest to earth. Loki’s Torch was a binary star system. There was a time when every drink given to Crowley ended with the angel waxing poetic about binary star systems. Slurred and stumbling words do not an elegant poem make, but there was emotional weight behind everything Crowley said.

Desperate for something soothing, his mind ventured to that Hans Christian Anderson first edition. The book shouldn’t have been as comforting to him as it was, especially not The Little Mermaid specifically, but it was all he wanted to read when he returned to the familiar safety of his shop. He walked directly to it and took it from its shelf, opening it where the ribbon bookmark told him the story was. Just holding the volume sent the sorrow of the author up his fingers and through his chest. He didn’t have to talk to Anderson to know there had been a man in his life, one who didn’t feel the same. A man who couldn’t even learn of the love held for him, a man blind to devotion. The Mermaid willingly wagered her life and subjected herself to endless pain for the prince. The prince rewarded her with a dog’s bed in the hall outside his door, and he called her dumb. “Oh, Hans…” Aziraphale sighed at the pages. Crowley had never been cruel like the prince was, but something told him Anderson exaggerated his beloved’s behavior for the sake of the story. During his first reading, he had wondered how the mermaid could be so blind to what the prince thought of her. He was confused, briefly, by how the mermaid hoped for her love to be returned despite clear signs otherwise. After considering it for only a moment, however, it made him think that perhaps there had been signs in his own life he failed to see.

"Aziraphale, you damned fool.” He admonished quietly, putting the collection of fairy tales away in favor of the first of his historical accounts his hand touched. He had never used his own written words for bibliomancy, but in theory, any book containing the truth would work. The only books that ever mentioned an angel named after crows were his own. Questions regarding Crowley were best directed at a book containing his direct quotes. Painted in gold leaf on the spine was a range of years. From the middle of the fourteenth century to the end. It was perfect. He met with Crowley multiple times in that span, and he rarely stopped writing about him back then. If he was going, to be honest with himself, every volume of the account was probably filled with the angel. A drawing of Crowley could be found every five or so pages in most of them, growing more frequent as time marched. He convinced himself he was recording the angel's ever-current fashion taste for the historical value. The truth was that he was afraid he'd forget how well the clothes and the hair flattered him. He made a short noise in the back of his throat, tight with stress at the knowledge that he'd have to write all he could remember of the interaction at the duck pond. He wouldn't focus his thoughts on that until he knew what his preferred divination method could tell him.

He sat at the desk in his backroom, readying a piece of parchment. His mind raced with a million ways to ask, but he needed to commit to only one clear and specific question before seeking an answer. He wrote on the parchment "What does the angel Crowley hope to gain from the demon Aziraphale?". It was almost… harsher than he had meant it. It made his heart pound with panic. How could he prepare himself for knowledge he spent nearly six millennia running from. He never wanted to know this. He never questioned Crowley's motivations when Crowley came to him with offers of meals and company. He couldn't imagine there was a comfortable answer and now he was sure he had misread 6000 years of interaction. He had been so lonely and so desperate for a companion, he missed how much Crowley -avoided- him. Every long bout of silence between them, it was because Crowley pulled away. Between 3120 and 2000 B.C. had been the longest, and Crowley didn't seem happy to see Aziraphale at the end of it. He always had the sense that he thought of Crowley more than Crowley thought of him.

"Open the book," He said to himself sternly. "You've had your wings sawn off, you were thrown from Heaven into boiling sulfur and you survive Hell continuously. You've had the floor torn from beneath you before. You don't need a foundation to stand on and you don't need heaven- any part of it. Not even the best of it". That was a lie. His life would be unrecognizable without Crowley. "Open. The. Book” it felt like he had to force himself to move. It wasn’t the first time his body ignored his commands, but this instance was particularly frustrating. Right hand and pen poised above the parchment, ready to write the first words his eyes fell upon, he ran a finger along the book’s pages and, somewhere near the middle, he opened it.

Aziraphale’s eyes fell on the beginning of the second paragraph, and the words were, disappointingly, his own. “_Perhaps there is much of myself I can never know. Exploration of those sides of me is dangerous. I cannot scrutinize my desires safely, I can only glance in their direction. How could I know fully what I want from him when the knowledge that I want and need his presence is horror enough? I cannot be sure that there -is- something further I want from him, aside from his company. I cannot even ask that of him. I must have ventured farther than can be remedied across the line he warned of centuries ago in Iceland. The worst of all of this is that my ignorance of my wants is a lie, born out of fearful self-preservation. I know exactly what I want from him and it’s the worst possible thing. I say I cannot know because it cannot be said_”

He read the passage six times over, expecting something to change, to reveal that the answer had been a joke from the cruelest gods. Bibliomancy, by his hands, has never once been wrong. It was inconceivable, still, that what he read had been the truth. Crowley always told him that he held all of Hells imagination in him, but he couldn't see how Crowley could possibly feel anything in the proximity of the way he did. Ink dropped from his pen to splatter on the parchment, obscuring a word or two of the question and reminding him that he was meant to record his every attempt at magic to test his accuracy and improve his skills. But how could he write with a shaking hand? How could he solidify something so unspeakable?

The demon was on his feet in a moment, ignoring the darkness at the edges of his vision when he moved too fast. His coat and gloves were slid back on, his hat replaced on his curls and his cane returned to his hand in a mirror of his actions that morning. By all clock’s accounts, it was still morning, but in Aziraphale’s mind, considerable time must have passed. He left his shop with the knowledge that he wouldn't be able to find Crowley if he tried. It wouldn't be worth trying, so he didn't. He knew better than to seek Crowley out, the reaction was never favorable. He had no choice, in every instance of his life, to wait for the angel, hoping that he’d return to once again bring meaning to his days, validity to his life. It had always been pathetic, how Aziraphale felt he didn’t matter until the days Crowley sought him. Like his very existence was paused in his absence. The way a house was useless without residents, wine was devoid of value without someone to drink it, and a book meaningless without a reader. Like a performance without an audience. A doll without a child, motionless in a simulacrum of a furnished home- of a full life- lying in wait to be animated by the proximity of the one person it was made for.

He scanned the streets of SoHo as he walked, hoping for a distraction of any kind.

Whispers of a gentlemen's club piqued his interest. He was, after all, at the moment, a gentleman.

1941, London

The first thing Crowley heard when he woke up was his own strangled gasp, and the second was like a thousand cats wailing in unison. He could always feel Aziraphale’s presence, stronger since they both settled in London, and he could often even tell how the demon was feeling. In the near century he spent sleeping, every brief moment of wakefulness was flooded with a concerning rage that changed how the radius of love felt. The anger made the love painful and oppressive, and Crowley couldn’t stand it so he slept. This time, the ambient cloud of overwhelming emotion had shifted towards something far more complicated, like a swirling storm. He could pick out details like stress and something entirely foreign. Well, not entirely, but it had never been felt by Aziraphale. It was hatred. It made Crowley’s blood colder, made him shake under the vastness of it. “What the fuck?” has sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, his joints creaking before they popped. His hair flooded him in wine-red, threatening to drown him. He had never seen it so horribly tangled and filthy and he couldn’t see past the mess of it, so in a snap, it was shorn as short as it had been when he settled into bed back in ‘62. He was immediately struck with another wave of dread by the sight through his window.

London was rubble.

Not all of it, only

Only most of it. His eyes darted south, but from this window, he couldn’t see SoHo. He threw himself from his bed, those stiff junctions in his body protesting every inch of movement. “Fuck” he hissed, walking as fast as his distrustful knees could carry him to the atrium. His heart sank briefly at the sight of every one of his plants dead and dry. The grapes he had planted for Aziraphale, though he never told him, they had been doing so well. That was before Crowley tucked himself away from the world. The plan had been to surprize Aziraphale with a bountiful grape harvest. Maybe the demon would teach him something about wine-making. Nobody in the world had such a long-practiced technique. He’s have to start again.

“What year is it?” he asked the empty room, quiet and haunted as he neared the glass wall with apprehension. How long does it take a city to turn to rubble? If it was a city like Demascus, erosion was slow, but If the city was Alexandria…

If he stood in the far corner against the windows, he could see SoHo. It was nearly impossible to be sure, but to his eyes, it looked like the neighborhood was still standing.

That wasn’t the direction Aziraphale’s love and pain radiated from. He could feel it as he always could, pulsing outward from the only demon with a sacred heart. With enough focus, the epicenter could always be located.

There was no time to deal with the stairwell, or even the sidewalk, so Crowley put himself directly into the driver’s seat of his crow-black Bently. He had bought it because it reminded him of his wings, which were the only part of himself he could comfortably love. He bought it because Aziraphale likes his wings, too. Because he never stopped wanting to return the gift of flight to Aziraphale, but only Crowley had ever been inside of it.

The car, in its early years in the possession of an angel seeking to fly, resisted the velocity Crowley pushed it to. It had since learned that when Crowley woke from his relentless slumber, he intended to speed. The speedometer was even polite enough to add three more numbers. That wailing sound he had heard from his apartment wasn’t in his head. It seemed louder down on the street, and no matter how far Crowley drove, it continued. The streets were eerily empty. Fires burned in some of the broken down buildings. “Did I… sleep through Armageddon?”

That was a horrifying idea. Maybe the loathing that filled the air was Aziraphale’s resentment of Heaven boiling over at the end of all things. The angels could have don’t anything to him without Crowley there to protect him. He had left Aziraphale alone. The gas pedal, though already touching the Bentley’s floor, found a bit more room to press further under Crowley’s shoe.

He saw only one person on his way to the epicenter, a man in an extremely simple and unadorned suit hurrying through cellar doors. Crowley changed his clothes to something similar.

Another layer of confusion settled over him as his car pulled up to a church. Something evil seemed to ooze through the tall stained glass windows. It couldn’t have been caused by Aziraphale, he had never felt like… like a sickness.

Without a plan, he stepped out of the bently and into the gothic revival. Standing in the dark, by the altar and in front of a statue of an eagle, were two men. They were clearly human but the energy coming off of them was completely rancid. Though he could feel Aziraphale, he was nowhere to be seen.

"Mr. Fell. How long were you intending to make us wait?" One of them said, and Crowley placed the accent as German.

Crowley blew out air out through closed lips and leaned a hip against a pew “ ‘m not Mr. Fell. I’d bet he stood you boys up”

The one who had spoken earlier hummed, trying very hard to seem impassive and in control “Do you think Mr. Fell would be foolish enough to disappoint The Fuhrer, Mr…” he trailed off, clearly asking for Crowley’s name.

“Anthony J. Crowley.” He said, foot tapping impatiently “Look, I’m going to be real with you, I don’t pay much attention to politics anymore, and I’m sure you’re lovely conversation, but I didn’t come here to see you and-”

“Anthony- may I call you Anthony?”

“No”

“_Anthony_?” This voice came from behind, and it was a musical sound Crowley identified on the first syllable. He sounded pained.

“Aziraphale!” He turned, overjoyed to hear his voice, but he swallowed, feeling an anxious fear creep up his spine “Do you not like it?” it came out more insecure than he was comfortable with. Now that he was looking at Aziraphale, he remembered where they were. The Lamb of Eden was hopping from his left foot to his right, and back again, making small sounds ranging from discomfort to agony. “You shouldn’t be in here”

“Me?" He was indignant, and he began flapping his hands, eyebrows tightly drawn together "you don't show up for eight decades, and now you're here mucking up my plans!"

"Mucking up? What the heaven are you talking about, lamb?" Crowley watched him with concern and tried to think of a way to get the demon to safety.

"Kill these two, they are very irritating," said the German impotently.

Aziraphale shot a hell-fire glare at the human "I want you to die knowing that Odin is a physically impaired _witch_ and he won’t grant you access into Valhalla. No god would welcome you into their feast hall.” He looked back at Crowley, humans forgotten “I've re-routed a bomb, angel. It'll drop here in just a few seconds, and I am going to save you but I don't have enough room in my mind for both of us, okay? So don't be upset when I die-"

"Do you expect us to believe that?"

"A bomb?! Aziraphale why wouldn't you save-" something screamed above them, a sound that split the air. Aziraphale pointed upward, his wide lamb's eyes focused on Crowley.

Crowley thought as quickly as he could, imagining a shield encircling Aziraphale entirely, sealing him away from the flame to come. It didn't occur to him, the amount of trust he was displayed by forgetting to worry about himself, until the church was nothing but stones and fire. Heaven would take another set of his wings for that, if they ever found out. The bomb had created a frankly terrifying radius of destruction, the whole city block was dust. The whole…

"Fuck!" Crowley swore "The Bentley!" The stress of the past thirty minutes crashed over him like waters of The Flood and his eyes started to sting. "I forgot about my car"

"Yes, dear, but I'm sure it understands" Aziraphale said gently and confusingly as he passed Crowley by, walking towards what had been the entrance.

Baffled, Crowley turned to look at him "what-" his breath caught, watching Aziraphale stand in front of the perfectly preserved car, not a scratch, not a speck of dust. "You-" he could feel his lip quiver and he took a deep breath. If he started crying in front of Aziraphale, he'd have to relocate to a different galaxy. "You couldn't save _yourself_ but you could save my _car_?"

Aziraphale's expression changed into something empathetic and worried "oh, dear boy I wasn't trying to upset you. I would have been fine, I just-" he shifted on his feet and whinced "Well I saw you arrive and I could tell this is important to you" he gestured at the vehicle, which sat patiently still. "And then you went right in and I got so scared I wouldn't be able to get to you in time"

That felt like too much to unpack all at once, so Crowley focused on the remaining physical problem. He walked to the passenger door and opened it "get in, sit down. You silly demon, ruining into a church, as if it won’t burn you like the damn sun"

Aziraphale hesitated at the opening, bending awkwardly and standing upright again a few times before he seemed to decide on how he wanted to fold himself into the space.

"Have you never been in a car before? You're acting like" he waved a hand and made a sound, walking around the car's front to get to the driver's seat. "Some sort of space man"

"Well," he paused like he considered lying "no. They're big and heavy and move too quickly, they seem very dangerous" he patted the dashboard nervously and it reminded Crowley of the first time he had seen him on a horse.

"I think we need to talk"

"Do we?" His tone was light, but the was he fidgeted betrayed him.

"About a lot of things. First, I am not loving the casual way you sweep away the possibility of your discorperation like it wouldn't be bad"

"I'm sure it would be fine-"

"Have you been discorperated before?"

"No, but-"

"Then how could you know, lamb?" He nearly snapped at him, and he put his hands on the wheel and took a deep breath before taking again, calmer now "would you close your door, please?"

Aziraphale's hand went to rest on the door and for a moment, Crowley thought it was shaking "a-are you going to make it move?"

He was more scared of the car than the church. More scared of the Bently than the bomb. It made Crowley’s head spin "I'm taking you home and I'm going to see if something can be done about your feet before the pain becomes permanent"

Aziraphale swallowed. He must have known full well that if a being of their stock grew accustomed to a pain, it can stay on virtue of being expected. "You don't have to do-"

"No, Aziraphale, I think I do. Maybe if you didn't run into a _church_ I wouldn't need to, but here we are" it was easier to be honest about the slight irritation he felt than the overwhelming love and compassion.

"It didn’t matter that it was a church the moment you wandered directly into a building with a bunch of _Nazis_, Crowley" he said that word like it held a world of filthy meaning behind it that Crowley should have full knowledge about.

Crowley stared blankly "I uh…"

"Didn't realize they were fascist? They kept talking about their fuhrer" he looked at Crowley incredulously.

"Um…"

"Crowley what aren't you telling me?"

"Well If I say, you might be mad" he shrugged. He hatted admitting to Aziraphale he didn’t know something. It’s not that Aziraphale was ever condescending about it, but he clearly valued intelligence and it worried Crowley to know he didn’t live up to his most important standards.

"Dear, you were the angry one only a moment ago, I can be patient"

He groaned "Idontknowwhatanaziis"

The demon's eyebrows shot up and he blinked owlishly. "You. You don't know. You don't know about Nazis? Crowley,_ Nazis_?"

"Well saying it a third time won't make me suddenly know!" He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "I've been sleeping"

"Sleeping."

"Do we just sit and repeat each other now, is that how conversations happen in ~current year~?" He pressed the back of his skull into the headrest, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. "Will you _please_ close your door"

"It's 1941" he said, clearly too astonished to judge, and he finally closed the door. "Nazis are…" he sighed "Gods above, there's just so much… they're worse than me and Hell. Even Dagon is disgusted by them. They're doing terrible things in their own country and out of it. They’re why London is in ruins, but… Well humans here are some of the lucky ones. The fascist kill and destroy on an unimaginable scale, and they-" be swallowed "They… Crowley, they kill your people. And people who are like both of us, people who love who they match" Crowley couldn't watch as Aziraphale spoke, because the demon seemed so small as he shook with sobs. "I um. I was worried about you. I didn't know where you were. I feared the worst and I- I thought, well. If someone so evil kills and angel… Is that enough? Is it like..." he didn’t seem willing to finish the sentence, but Crowley’s mind filled in the blank with an image of a two by three inch parchment folded in half burning on the surface of a pond.

Crowley swallowed and for a moment, he reached towards Aziraphale, but some crippling fear stopped him from placing his hand on his shoulder. He grabbed the wheel again and pulled onto the road. “I… I wouldn’t have let myself sleep for so long if I had known this would happen. I wouldn’t have left you to live through it on your own. I know we shouldn’t but, god, Aziraphale, when it gets this bad, all I can think about is how you’re the only stable thing in this world. How we’re all we really have. Like The Flood. The plagues. Alexandria. I guess I’m surprised?” he paused, trying to figure out where he was going with this “I guess I thought you could sense me and find me that way”

He sniffed and looked at him "sense you? C… can you sense _me_?"

"Mmmmm" his head tilted back slowly as his hum got gradually louder and more distraught. Emotions were high, and that’s when their most dangerous conversations happen. This topic felt particularly treacherous "yeah. Yeah I can sense you. It's how I've found you every time since… since Wessex I think"

Aziraphale's eyes were definitely focused on him, but Crowley refused to look. "What, um. What's it like?"

He kept his gaze fixed ahead and he clenched his jaw as he weighed the pros and cons of lying. The biggest con was that Aziraphale was a master liar and he'd see through him like glass. "It usually feels like… like waves of energy flow from you, outwards in every direction. It radiates from you"

In his limited view, it looked like Aziraphale shuddered. "A… a demonic energy? That hardly sounds pleasant, I'm sorry you have to-"

"No, you've never felt like that" He said, too quickly and desperately for his own taste. He had never even wanted to tell him any of this. It was past the line he had drawn between them. "Okay so I don't know how to phrase this without it seeming… inappropriate? So I'll just- I'll just tell you a story"

"You have my ears" he said, as if he had much of a choice as a captive audience in a moving car.

"On Eden's wall. When we watched the humans walk into the desert, I remember being astonished that I could still feel their love like I was standing between them. I was wrong, but I didn't know that then, I just assumed human love was that strong. The next time I felt anything like it- with the same intensity and size- that was the same winter when you pulled me into that painted cave and fed me forbidden fruit. I only realized it was coming from you in Wessex. So you don't feel like whatever you think a demon would feel like. You feel like… like an ocean of love"

Crowley braved a sideways glance and his heart dropped at the sight of Aziraphale with his head in his hands. "Oh, no, lamb, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"N-no, you didn't do anything wrong dear boy I-" the crushing sound of a sob broke up the words "I suppose I'm just overwhelmed. I'm sorry, this is awfully embarrassing. I… I had just been so worried that I wasn't fully capable"

"Capable? Of… crying?"

In his peripheral vision, Aziraphale could be seen smiling briefly and dabbing at his cheeks "no, dear, _love_. I can't feel it in the atmosphere anymore, so I feared I'd been cut off from it"

"Oh," he swallowed "for what it's worth, I think you're made of it. I think you _are_ love. Personified."

"Oh," Aziraphale echoed, breathless, and he stayed quiet afterward.

The two of them drove in silence, Aziraphale too buried in his thoughts to be appalled by the speed. Crowley felt dizzy. The confession felt impossibly heavy. Could Aziraphale hear the earnest truth behind the words? Would he put two and two together that an angel, in proximity with someone he believed to be love personified, would inevitably come to have feelings for that person?

The bookshop stood greyer than Crowley remembered it. Perhaps it was the shadow that loomed over the entire city. Perhaps it was because Crowley hadn’t been this close to the building since it’s purchase, let alone entered. He never even got to see how Aziraphale had furnished it, which he had looked forward to. He wished he hadn’t mucked things up so thoroughly in '62. Maybe then it wouldn’t have been so fraught today. Maybe Crowley wouldn’t have tucked himself away for so long. He forced himself to get out of the car, instead of sitting in silence contemplating his every mistake. He hurried around the front of the Bentley to open Aziraphale’s door and leaned on the roof of it to keep the demon seated. “No walking, not yet at least.”

Aziraphale seemed to carefully avoid Crowley’s gaze “Well I’d like to not live in your car, I’m quite accustomed to the comforts of home”

“No, I’m about to carry you in”

He looked at him now, an eyebrow raised “Is that some form of historical recreation?”

His mind revisited that day every night before bed. One doesn’t forget the day they’re re-introduced to an old acquaintance and new enemy only to fall helplessly in love with them. “I don’t know about any history books that mention that bit, Lamb.” he looked at the heavy double-doors, only three feet away. It would be a much simpler task to carry him when he doesn’t need to fly. “Speaking of. Do you want me to carry you in like this, or would you prefer to shift”

Aziraphale’s cheeks tinged red “Well, it’s been… several decades since I’ve shifted, at least, outside of switching around secondary sex characteristics. At a certain point, scaring farmers stopped being fun and started boring me… I’m not entirely sure I could make the switch properly. I can still feel the consecration all over me.”

“It really isn’t a problem” Crowley kneeled down next to the car, holding his arms open. “Come on. At least it can’t be as uncomfortable as the first time, when you didn’t know me”

“I wouldn’t be so sure” he said vaguely, shifting in place for a moment before steadying himself against the dashboard to slide himself into Crowley’s arms.

“Okay now hold on around my neck”, he prompted, breathless in the face of the contact.

There was a hesitation, and it gave Crowley a specific kind of stress that he couldn’t see Aziraphale’s expression, but soon enough, two soft arms came to rest on Crowley’s shoulders. He could feel the demon’s breath on his neck, and the part of him dictated by a snake’s mind made him want to curl into his jacket and go back to sleep for another century. He took a deep breath and straightened his legs, standing and carrying Aziraphale with relative ease.

Aziraphale, when they got to the door, opened it with a snap of his fingers and Crowley carried him in, his sights on a plush, if old couch.

“What does the ‘J’ stand for?” Aziraphle asked, practically against Crowley’s neck, making him shudder.

“I-it’s just a ‘J’, really” he put Aziraphale down on dusty cushions “Shoes off, socks too. Where’s your kitchen?”

1967; London

Crowley wasn't the only thing on Aziraphale's mind anymore. wasn't anyone's fault, and in the long run, it was a good change. She still thought about the angel every day, of course, but she had a family to worry about now. Seven adoptive children, and an ever-fluctuating number of their significant others.

She had found each of them in mostly the same way, by stumbling upon someone young and poor and queer in need of a motherly figure. Aziraphale saw this and became what was needed. She was gentle with them, and made sure they had everything they asked for. There was no use for magic if she couldn't use it to improve the lives of her people.

And they all really were her people. In the same way the pagans had been her people, the children who paint themselves in silver and dress themselves in gold and uplift each other in a world that tried it’s best to hold them down were her people.

As it turns out, humans were capable of shapeshifting, slowly and with the help of medical miracles and a hefty fund. Aziraphale was more than happy to foot the bill, spin lies, and forge documents for her children. She held their shaking hands as they tried their best to prove themselves to someone who couldn’t possibly understand, because those people in lab coats stood between her children and the bodies they wanted. When they built up the courage for surgery, Aziraphale paid for that too. Money never meant anything to her, except for the oppression it caused. She had seen food go to waste by the ruling class while the rest starve for as long as she could remember and for just as long, it has enraged her. The vindictive ways she’s ruined the lives of aristocracy were easy to write off as ‘just doing her job’ when Beelzebub asked, or Crowley. She wondered, for centuries, if Crowley had an image of her in their head that fits the demonic role she was placed into. Did Crowley view Aziraphale through heaven’s lense, or their own?

“Mamma Lilith,” her youngest, a sixteen year old who’d been kicked out by her parents for being a girl. She had chosen the name Maeve Fell. “After Aerowen walks, can we get dinner”

Aziraphale brushed a lock of Maeve’s hair behind her ear, “Of course, dear girl. Have you asked your siblings what they’d like to eat?”

She nodded.

“Is it something we can make at home?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded again.

Aziraphale smiled "Wonderful. A nice night in the shop, dinner at the table, we can light candles and talk about something to do this weekend. I think a museum trip would be fun." She saw one of her daughters step out from behind a curtain along with other women and women-shaped people all dressed in black with veils. "Ah, there's Aerowen, how lovely". She had helped her sew her widows gown in the style of the regency period. Her children all loved the historical fashion books she had, and nothing made her happier than to see them following their curiosity and learning. They each had grown quite specific taste, with their favorite eras. She had the most fun helping Ellita, who fell in love with the 18th century. She had missed making stays, the challenge of it and the satisfaction of seeing the beauty of the finished product, only to cover it with another layer or two. Ellita had started to use a machine to sew the bone channels and it revolutionized the pace of the work. Like magic. Aziraphale had nearly cried with pride when Elita made her first ensamble on her own.

Aerowen was clearly suppressing crashing waves of joy, because a smile would have ruined the image of a rich widow. These events brought queer people alive, made them shine. Since the industrial revolution, London was grey, but now, Soho had color and vibrancy. In this building, where cops were kept at bay with a demon’s miracles, Aziraphale and her people could breathe.

She had forgotten about the judges until she saw Aerowen giggle and jump in joy. A perfect score, it was her first win. The Fell family would be taking four trophies home that night, and Aziraphale couldn’t have been prouder of how her children beamed at each other.

Stepping into the cold air of the night, Aziraphale pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, glancing over her children to be sure they were dressed warmly enough. Her oldest, Felicity, was wearing a strapless dress, and apparently neglected to bring a coat. Aziraphale tutted and took her shawl off to put it on her daughter to keep her warm. “I’ll be fine dear, I’m shaped for the cold, but you’re rail-thin. You’ll freeze out here”

Felicity blushed, bending slightly to be in Aziraphale’s reach “Thank you…” looking over her mother’s shoulder, Felicity frowned. “Mamma, didn't you say your man drove an old Bentley?”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to blush and she spluttered a bit, “w-well I wouldn’t call him_ my_ man. I’m not even sure he _is_ a man these days”

“They’re fluid about it like you, then?”, asked Maeve with the wide hopeful eyes she gave whenever she heard about someone queer growing to adulthood.

She nodded “Yes, dear. One time, I saw them and they were a man when I was a woman and I… Well we’ve never not matched before, so before they could see me, I changed clothes and-”

“But they’re ‘not yours’, sure ma” her only son laughed. He had named himself ‘Samhain’ when he read her books on magic and Aziraphale had been entirely charmed by it.

“Well, I can’t pretend my devotion to them is any proof of how they feel for me,'' she said frankly. It hadn’t bothered her in a very long time, knowing that she was in love with someone who could never feel the same. She hoped her willingness to accept Crowley’s wishes would serve as a good example to her children.

“I mean… I wouldn’t have brought it up if there wasn’t an old Bently over there…”

Aziraphale turned so quickly, her curls nearly shook loose of their carefully styled positions. The Bentley really was there. It was empty, and it’s angel was nowhere to be seen. Her mind replayed something another mother had told her a few Balls ago, that a red-haired man had been wandering around London looking for ‘demons’. The mother had interpreted ‘demons’ to refer to the Fell family, it was a common nickname for them, thanks to Aziraphale choosing the name “Lilith Fell”. “Shoot. Okay, dears, I’ll walk you home but there’s something I have to do. I am going to try to be home in time for dinner, I’m sorry I probably won’t be able to help cook. Felicity, dear, if, by wild chance, I am not home before bed, would you make sure your siblings all read?”

“Sure, Mama”

Lantern clutched to her chest, Aziraphale tucked herself into the passenger seat of the empty Bently. She hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long. The guilt and fear of what she was about to do weighed on her. She looked out the window, at neon lights and layers of torn posters. She was busy trying to understand how the bullet holes in the window were fake when the driver side door opened.

The two stared at each other, possibly both in shock, but it was hard to tell through Crowley’s glasses.

“Lamb.” it sounded like a cautious greeting. "What are you wearing? You look like a flapper"

“I live in Soho, Crowley, I hear things.” she said, choosing to ignore the question to make things go as quickly as possible.

He leaned away slightly “Things?”

Aziraphale sighed. “If you go around asking about demons, how could that possibly not get back to me? It sounds to me like you’re planning on making a deal with some other demon for that fire you want. Crowley, it's too dangerous. This fire won't just discorporate you, it will destroy you completely.” Her throat tightened around the words.

"You said how you felt 105 years ago" His hands gripped the steering wheel.

"And I haven't changed my mind"

Crowley’s leg started bouncing with pent up energy “Is the lecture nearly done?”

That hurt, in a strange way that Aziraphale couldn’t keep from showing on her face. “That’s not what this is, Angel. I can't let you risk your life, even if it means -I- have to be the danger you're in.” she could feel herself about to cry and she forced herself to stay calm. “Please stop trying to contact other demons. They'll tear you apart and never get bored with it”

From the floor of the cab next to her feet, Aziraphale lifted the old gas lantern. "Don't go twisting the valve"

Crowley's eyebrows lifted. "Is this…"

She swallowed, unable to look at Crowley's grateful expression, "The hottest". She prayed that Crowley won't ask what she had to do to get it. How could she explain to Crowley that she had risked himself to steal it directly from hell? How could she tell him that she had to pour all of her fire into it, leaving her defenseless against the rest of heaven.

Crowley took the gas lantern carefully, examining the thing with wonder. It must have seemed like an ordinary old thing, until his hands were on it and he could surely feel the power of it. "It'll light if I turn the valve?" He asked, but Aziraphale didn't offer an answer, so they sat in silence for a few moments. When Aziraphale moved his hand to the door, Crowley spike up with a quote she didn’t think he knew "I hope you have not been living a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy"

Aziraphale recoiled, feeling sick. "Good". there was nothing good about what Aziraphale was doing. Handing a weapon of unholy destruction to the very creature that weapon could hurt the most, just to stay the only demon in his life. “Don’t quote Oscar at me," she said, because that aspect of it hurt too. There was a chance Crowley didn't know what Oscar was to her, maybe he just remembered seeing the section of the shop devoted to him. It must have looked, to Crowley, like a librarian's admiration of an author. Not an altar kept for a deceased lover.

Paradoxically, Aziraphale felt guilty for that too. For loving the occasional human. She had no romantic obligation to Crowley, the angel belonged to heaven, not her. But still, when she'd loved women in this form and men in the other, she'd always stayed up at night thinking about Crowley, feeling like she was hurting both beings she loved by loving both of them. But if anything, she would hurt both people she loved because she loved Crowley. Crowley wasn't hurt when Aziraphale loved a Human, he was being hurt continuously over time by Aziraphale loving him. A demon in love with a human was wrong, but extremely common. A demon in love with an Angel, well...

“Should I thank you?”

She swallowed. Being thanked would make it real. If she never sees Crowley again, being thanked would kill her. “Better not”

"Let me drop you off somewhere then. Anywhere you wanna go, I'll drive" his eyebrows were drawn together. This was as close the angel ever got to begging.

A million reasons to say no flooded her mind. 'I can't have you take me somewhere just to watch you drive away with this lantern, to an unknown location, to do something unknown with it', 'I can't have my children see you if you'll never be around again', and ,' not if you won't stay in my sight when we get there'. What she voiced instead ,"someday," because there had to be a future. "Maybe the two of us can go on a picnic. Dine at the Ritz. Go to the cinema"

"Of course" he answered quickly, his expression still desperate "but where do you want to go now? I'll take you-"

"You go too fast for me, Crowley" she said, and there was a question in the downturn of his lips, but she was out of the car before he could voice it.

1977-1980, London

Crowley had, between waking up in World War II and receiving the hellfire lantern, moved from his apartment to a house for the garden. He didn't like growing grapes inside, but when Aziraphale asked, he told him he wanted the space for roses and a wider variety. The first time Aziraphale came to the house, he wasted no time in touching every plant he saw. It was something Aziraphale did often, getting his hands all over anything that looks like it might have a texture. Sometimes, Crowley heard him go “Oooh that must feel awful” before running his fingers on something rough, or a fabric that caught on his fingerprints. More charming than that, even, was when he felt something soft or smooth, or when he’d bury his fingers into furs to judge the feeling of it. Textures really seemed to matter to the demon, there were foods that made him sad because he loved the taste but couldn’t accept the texture. There where clothes he’d refuse to buy, no matter how much he loved how it looked, because he hated the feeling of the fabric on his skin. But he still, paradoxically, couldn’t keep his hands off something when the curiosity hit, no matter how sure he was that he’d hate the experience.

Nothing in Crowley’s garden made him frown or giggle uncomfortably when he touched it. He gasped when he saw the soft white leaves that lined the walkway between the front and back yards. He couldn’t stop running the leaves between his thumb and forefinger, cooing. “Crowley, dear boy, what is this? It’s delightful”

“It’s uh… They call it Lamb’s Ear.” he had told him, leaning against the half-height wall the plants sat over. “Supposed to be bad luck, but I suspect they’re still just making a fuss about what happened in Eden”

“Ah” said Aziraphale lightly “are my ears this soft?”

Crowley shrugged, and he paused to make it seem like the answer wasn’t already on his mind “Yeah”

The back wall of the yard was lined with three varieties of grapes and when Aziraphale saw the vines, he gasped and hurried over to them. “They’re lovely! Isn’t it too cold here? I only ever grew them on the medeteranian”

“If it is, they haven’t seemed to notice. I think I’ve seen vines in other yards. Haven’t seen much yields on the neighbors plants, though, might give ‘em a hand with it.” Crowley shrugged as if his heart wasn't pounding at the sight of Aziraphale fawning over the grapes he grew for him. "Maybe one day, I could grow enough for wine. Since you make it so well…"

"Oh, with this strong vine, I think it’s already enough. What’s it done in the last three years? More than 9 kilograms, I suspect" The being of love was nearly glowing, and the grapes looked all the more lustrous with him praising them. Crowley made a mental note to plant two more. At this stage in his plot to write an old rune that means “May our creator bathe us in Her holy light” using a major highway, he didn’t have much to do but wait, so he could use something to pass his time.

Some years after that, Aziraphale arrived at Crowley’s door, in her most modern dress yet, with a hemline nearly up to her knees. The most captivating thing is that past the fabric of her stockings, Crowley could see the dark lines of her tattoos. It was the first glimpse they'd seen of ink on her skin since learning about it. Her arms were covered, as they always were, and it filled Crowley with a not-unfamiliar desire to find and memorize every tattoo. In her hands were two slips of paper, and she smiled. “Do you have a nice dress you can move in, dear?”

Crowley fumbled to get their glasses on, anything to hide how they awed at the way the dress highlighted Aziraphale’s softness. “Where’re we going?”

“A year ago, you and I went for lunch and when you took me home you played this new band you loved. You said you felt understood by the lyrics, and you know how I love to see you gush over the art you like even if it isn't my exact taste. So when I was gifting a copy of _The Conquest of Bread_ to a working mother, and her children spoke to each other about that same band and how they travel to play their music, I couldn’t help but take notice. A week or so after that, I was giving magic advice to a group of young pagans and they asked if I needed help with anything in return and I said I had no clue how to go about buying concert tickets-”

“Aziraphale did you buy us Queen tickets?” Crowley’s hands were by their mouth and there were tears in their eyes. Really, they weren't sure why they were so surprised by the kindness she routinely displayed. Aziraphale had always been the most thoughtful person Crowley knew.

"Why yes, of course I did, I thought you'd like to… are you okay, dear?" She tilted her head with concern, and Crowley tried to make out some of those tattoos on her muscled calves. It was mostly symbols, probably runes and sigils from what Crowley's learned about her beliefs.

"Hmm? Oh I'm really happy" they assured her "this is cute. What you're wearing"

Aziraphale lit up like the stars that Crowley made, and her fingers curled in the top layer of her skirt and she twisted her hips to make the petticoat sway, which had the indirect effect of bringing Crowley to the brink of death "really? I tried for the latest fashion, I'm glad I've found something you like"

Crowley could have let her know that, no, the fifties are not the latest fashion, but they were stuck on how she ended it "I like whatever you wear"

"Well, yes, in your _acceptance of all things_ sort of liking" she fiddled with the tickets in her hands, shrugging. "Do you have a dress, dear? Or a skirt?"

"Right, Yeah, we'll be matching" they said lamely "I'll uhh, go change. You can sit or find something to drink if you want" Crowley told her with a wave of their hand, already taking the stairs to their room two at a time. Once on the second floor and out of sight, they leaned against a wall and sighed, trying to collect themself. "Adam Christ, there's no way she doesn't know. She's down there in a nice little dress and- god I want to see those tattoos". They rubbed their eyes with the heels of theirs palms and groaned. They understood the intention behind surprising them with this concert, but they'd have liked time to mentally prepare for the ordeal of listening to love songs live next to Aziraphale while she's looking _like that_. The way her hair curled in ribbons of snow on her shoulders and her eyelashes were darkened by maskara. Crowley couldn't remember the last time they saw her in makeup. Rome? No. The night she gave them the lantern. They swallowed at the memory. They could remember how they felt in the moments leading up to the exchange, the confusion and surprise when they saw her, awe at how she looked, stress and fear at the way she frowned. They never got to see her in the 1920s. Had she worn drop-waist dresses like that one, or suits?

If she was going to look her best for this, so should they. It was routine, about now, for Crowley to use more than one miracle to perfect their appearance just to be able to stand being looked at by her. Today they went with a sweetheart neckline and a tight fit in a specific shade of very light pink Aziraphale once mentioned she associated with them. They miracled on their makeup three different times before they were happy with it. It took them more tries than that to be happy with their hair.

On the stairs, their eyes searched the living room for Aziraphale, and she was on their couch, sipping delicately from a tea cup. She looked up at them and she smiled, but only for a moment before she was looking at Crowley's bare arms "oh, dear girl, do you not have a sweater?" She asked with concern. She didn't wait for an answer before she was pushing books aside in her purse to get to something. "Now, I understand if you don't want to wear it because the fabric is so dark, but I think it might be worth keeping you warm" she had retrieved a dark burgundy cardigan from her purse and was holding it towards Crowley "nobody from upstairs will see you in it"

Not once did Crowley consider saying no to this, but they pretended to protest to save face. They did take the cardigan, it was loose and incredibly soft. It smelled like the world's oldest books and Aziraphale's perfume. "Thank you"

"I actually think that looks rather nice with that dress. Better than anything I could pair it with. Would you like to keep it?"

Crowley would have said no, had they not learned long ago that Aziraphale carried things around just waiting for the opportunity to give it to them.

"Might as well" they said with feigned nonchalance, clutching the knitted fabric. "'S this wool?"

"Yes, dear"

"I always thought that was interesting," Crowley put their hands in the pockets, half surprised to feel crumpled paper, a pencil, and a lighter inside. They hadn't expected Aziraphale to have actually worn the cardigan.

"What did you find interesting?"

Crowley shrugged "all the wool you keep around. You'd think sheepskin throws would make you feel all-" They paused, trying to find a word, but their couldn't, so they settled for waving their hands and exhaling through tight lips.

"Oh" she looked down, to Crowley's feet "don't I see you in snakeskin?"

Crowley shrugged "at times sure. But I don't think I fill my wardrobe with it. It certainly hasn't covered my bed for the past several centuries. And I didn't give any… well, scales, away back in Eden" their eyes looked for the undercut that never grew out, but it was hidden behind Aziraphale's avalanche of curls. She did always seem to absolutely hate it, but Crowley couldn't feel anything but admiration when they thought about it.

Aziraphale, predictably, brought a hand up to the nape of her neck, her cheeks flushing "I- I suppose it must say something about me"

"Nothing bad, probably. Besides, I think it's got more to do with your witch stuff than anything. Can't stand to see something's body go to waste, like their death didn't mean anything"

"I like how wool feels. Sometimes I do wish I still had mine but then I think, well," she reached toward Crowley and held on to the front of the cardigan, running her thumb over the fibers "how could I be sure that if I hadn't, humans would still use wool for such wonderful things?"

Crowley held their breath in her proximity "how could I be sure I'd have trusted you so quickly?"

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow and smiled "you trust me? Oh, dear, how embarrassing for you"

"Ppppft, hush" They pulled away from her "how soon should we be on our way?"

The tickets Aziraphale had gotten a hold of were pretty fantastic. Front row. For an old girl like her, it was impressive. Those young witches must have been great help. Or she committed theft without telling Crowley, which they wouldn't be shocked by. The most likely was probably a combination of the two. What wasn't as convenient was the fact that Aziraphale had them arrive too early, but it gave Crowley time to prepare for the mess ahead of them.

Crowley opened their mouth to talk, but with their nerves it took a few tries "I thought you hated this sort of music"

"I didn't love it" she admitted "but I do like his last name, and I love these people. Look around. I suspect many of them are queer like us" her voice was light and airy.

Crowley coughed "hey lamb, voice down, yeah? It's not the safest"

She laughed "dear, Hell gave me an award for the longevity of this specific body. I’ve had this one as long as you’ve known me. I’ve said all sorts of dangerous sentences in public. I spent 75% of The Burning Times as a woman and never once paused my practices. Nobody has successfully killed me, not once”

“An award, hm?” Crowley smiled “Is this like a certificate or a trophy?”

“Ah, well, it was actually a rather large cockroach in a small dirty glass jar, on account of cockroaches and their near legendary ability to survive. The other demons are just extremely unpleasant to be around” she hid something anxious behind a laugh “I certainly hope I’m not so repulsive”

“You’re magnetic” they answered, too quickly and too honestly, like they always do when Aziraphale looks this pretty and sounds this unsure.

She blushed and waved a hand "ppsh. Imagine the very Earth believing itself to be caught in the Moon's gravity"

"Well it is. The moon pulls on the Earth, you can see it in the tide"

"But the Earth couldn't orbit the moon" she countered, apparently sure that what she was saying held a clear meaning.

"Sure, but twin stars will orbit each other" Crowley thought back to being high off Apple of knowledge and seeing a binary star system on the ceiling of a painted cave. It must have been Alpha Centauri. They had so carefully sculpted those stars and balanced the system's gravitational pulls, like building with cards.

"Twin stars?" Aziraphale asked with interest "Lokabrenna is a binary system"

"What's that. Loki's…?"

"Loki's torch. Sirius A and B"

"Oh! Dog star. I know it. Your people named it after Loki?"

Aziraphale nodded. "To be entirely candid, I don't remember how we started talking about astrophysics"

"Metaphors" Crowley answered "I do like talking about space, though"

"I like hearing you talk about it. It brings out a passion in you" She smiled up at them with her sweet pink lip gloss and glitter eye-shadow.

“Like when you go on about books or some new restaurant. Or the gods” there was something admirable the way Aziraphale worshiped. Crowley hadn’t once heard her ask her gods for anything, but she poured out libations and prayed just to wish them a good day. “I bet you’re their favorite”

Aziraphale blushed “that’s very sweet of you, but I can’t imagine them picking favorites. Imagine how hard it must be to even remember the names of half of your worshipers as a god.”

Crowley thought for a moment about how the christianization of the world probably makes it plenty easy for the gods to know every individual devotee, but they carefully didn’t voice this. Instead they stood and watched the opening band.

The concert, once it actually started going, was a little overwhelming. It might have been less so if Aziraphale hadn’t worn a skirt, or if the hem touched the ground like every other skirt she’d worn in her long, long life. Or if she hadn’t worn makeup. Aziraphale at default was hard enough to deal with, with all the pouting and the pleased little smiles and those baby blue lamb’s eyes. But this, with her dressed up to go out and her dancing (not particularly well, but the beat of it was right), was significantly worse. Even worse than when Crowley had to sign for Aziraphale’s bookshop and she was in a pair of stays that did every right thing to her hips and breasts and /she was posing as Crowley’s wife/. Sometimes Crowley was suspicious. How could Aziraphale not know exactly what she was doing with every new outfit? How could it not be to purposefully…

Well Crowley wouldn’t accuse her of trying to -tempt- them, certainly! But still… Didn’t it all feel like seduction? The was she smiled at them in between songs, searching for enjoyment on their face.

The worst of it came about halfway through, and it was in no way Aziraphale’s fault. Neither was being pretty, but repression has a way of making Crowley cranky. This problem was entirely on the hands of Freddie fucking Mercury.

Front row tickets.

That’s the only reason he saw Aziraphale in the audience. The prettiest girl there, in all dark clothes and her white her, she must really draw the eye. Crowley wouldn’t know, they rarely looked away from her.

But they did look away from her when /Fat Bottomed Girls/ began to play. They weren’t even sure what made them look up at Freddie in that moment, maybe it was pure instinct that told them he was looking directly at their best friend.

And apparently looking while singing one of his horniest songs wasnt enough for Mercury, he had to get closer. Even worse, Aziraphale had realized she was the center of his attention and she was giggling into her hand.

How was it fair that a stranger who’s music she doesn’t even like could get to flirt with her so disrespectfully and still get that reaction? If Crowley tried shit half that overt, they’d get ignored for at least a week. Probably.

They hadn’t tried, obviously, that would be extremely risky behavior and Aziraphale doesn’t like a rocking boat.

But fucking Fredward Mecantalism gets to rock the boat. Sure.

Crowley was aware, distantly, that they shouldn't be so angry. they shouldn’t feel so jealous, they didn’t have much of a right to. But at the same time, Freddie Mercury was _kneeling_ in front of the love of their life and singing "are you gunna take me home tonight? /please/" Into his microphone. Crowley was also distantly aware that Freddie said "please" with just as much desperation in the official recording, but it sounded particularly concupiscent.

Crowley briefly wondered if this night would end with them first fighting their current favorite musician in the parking lot.

Ideally, it wouldn't.

Freddie did move on, after about _half the damn song_, and started singing at some other pretty girl with curves. Aziraphale was still giggling, her cheeks and nose dusted red. Crowley almost asked out loud if Aziraphale went for humans like that. He didn't even want to know the answer. He didn't need clarification for his fear regarding the nature of all those Oscar Wylde first editions.

Freddie couldn’t even keep his eyes off Aziraphale for longer than ten seconds at a time now that he’d noticed her. Crowley wondered if he could feel their glare through their sunglasses.

“Don’t you think, Angel dear?” Aziraphale asked, smiling at Crowley with expectation on her face.

She’d been talking to them, hadn’t she? “Hm? Sorry it’s er… loud”

Aziraphale gave them an unimpressed look, but it was fond. “I was just saying that I might have to log that one with downstairs. The temptation of a public figure, and all.”

“Well, after a while, doesn’t hell notice you’ve never had to try for temptations like that? Or is it more about the outcome than the effort?”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows drew together and she frowned, the way she always used to when she couldn’t tell if Crowley was insulting her or not, “How do you mean? I don’t really make a habit of it, it’s never even happened before”

“Are we… talking about two different things?” Crowley asked, hopelessly confused. “Haven’t you been writing down your temptations since the beginning?”

“Sure. Temptations like, ‘have another glass of wine before bed’ or ‘what’s the harm in kissing your life-long best friend’. O-or all manner of other things. But I’m never… The object of temptation has never been just me, before”

Crowley shook their head “I find that hard to believe”

Aziraphale held her arms close to her body and took a half-step away, expression guarded. “Is this because of a perception of demons or just me?”

Crowley’s heart fell “No, I’m not accusing you of anything, you clearly weren’t trying to get him to act like that. I was just trying to say…” they weren’t sure, not entirely. When the only thing their brain could think over and over again is “she’s beautiful”, it threatens to get out with every sentence they say. “Humans can’t help it” they covered “you still look like an… well, supernatural beings like us have a certain… allure?”

Aziraphale huffed, but it was clearly at herself, and she carefully dabbed at her eyes “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so on edge.”

Crowley’s eyes slipped past Aziraphale to a woman who was standing a few feet beside them, staring directly at Aziraphale. Normally, They could go out in public without the humans losing their minds over her, but for some reason today they were really seeing her. “I’d feel on edge with so many eyes on me, too, lamb” Crowley said, half warning and giving a subtle gesture in the direction of the woman.

“Whatever are you talking about?” She asked, turning, very unsubtly to look. “Maeve?” Aziraphale asked, voice filled with love.

“Mamma Lilith, it is you!” the woman laughed, overwhelmed but happy. With that one sentence, she destroyed Crowley’s belief that they knew Aziraphale best of anybody. “I thought maybe… but it couldn’t… you look so young for your age. Almost like nothing’s even changed.” the woman, who Crowley could reasonably assume was named Maeve, was clinging to Aziraphale’s cardigan sleeves.

There was a brief show of dread in Aziraphale’s eyes. Crowley could recognize the feeling. How could you explain to a human who knew you in a different decade why you didn’t age but they did. “But not you, dear girl, hm? Look at you, all grown. You look beautiful, I always knew this is how you’d grow up to look”

Crowley nearly cringed in sympathy. If she’d known Maeve as a child, they must not have seen each other since the sixties. Aziraphale should rightfully be elderly.

“Mama is this your…?” she trailed off, pointing to Crowley.

“Yes. Well, no, they’re not ‘my’ anything. Or, they _are_ my friend, but not my…” Aziraphale cleared her throat, clearly more nervous now than she was facing questions about her age. “What about you, sweetest heart? Is somebody yours?”

Maeve blushed and touched a few rings on her fingers “Well… We didn’t all go our separate ways. Samhain and Elita are with me.” she smiled wistfully “Aerowen and Felicity are together too. They moved to Scotland, but we keep in touch.”

“I’m glad. You were always so in awe of Elita. What about your schooling, did you all finnish?”

Maeve’s eyes filled with tears, but she was still smiling. “We did. Thanks to you, Mamma. None of us would have even gotten in without you. Without the notes and the books you packed… we’d have never graduated”

“No, you’d have carried each other through it” Aziraphale said, throat tight with unshed tears “you’ve always been capable of amazing things.”

Crowley, standing there with absolutely zero context, found themself choking up. There was a fear, though. If Maeve was somehow Aziraphale's daughter, she was bound to be smart enough to tell her mother's immortal.

On that matter.

How could Aziraphale have kids?

Did she… with a human? It was possible. But Aziraphale always seemed to keep a distance from humans with their mayfly lives.

Crowley had tonight their were best friends. Wouldn't Aziraphale have told them if she had kids?

Crowley only noticed Maeve was gone when Aziraphale grabbed their wrist to pull them through the crowd towards the exit. "So lovely seeing her again, but we really should go"

Crowley looked around for a sign of danger, or unwanted attention. When they couldn't see anything, they tried to sense the presence of other demons or angels. They could only feel the love radiating from Aziraphale. "What's going on?"

"I can't risk her knowing. She was never particularly Christian, but the world you grew up in can really affect your biases." They reached the exit and Aziraphale paused to look at Crowley. Her mascara was running "I don't want to know what she'd think of me if she knew what I am."

Crowley was, of course, no stranger to the lengths that were necessary to keep the humans from noticing them. They had never dealt, however, with that same visceral fear of judgement that they saw Aziraphale struggle with. She was right, in a way. Most humans wouldn't understand that a demon could be so good. They wouldn't understand that Aziraphale was a demon for no other reason than…

Well Crowley never really asked. It felt to invasive in the early days, and now that they were so close, it felt too late. "Oh, lamb, I don't think…" they didn't know what to say to her. They didn't know enough to comfortably tell her that her daughter would never think poorly of her for that. They sighed, hating the forlorn look in her eyes. "Do you want to look for something good to eat?"

"I'd like that, dear"

2008, Tadfield

Crowley had seen Gabriel on Earth before. He'd come to his home and touch his grape leaves and talk too loudly. There'd even been times almost like this, where Gabriel would meet Crowley somewhere different, or he'd bring Sandalphon along. This time was different enough to be jarring, different enough to give Crowley chills. Sandalphon was not the only one standing alongside the Archangel with his hands folded in front of him; Micheal and Uriel where both there. The air in the room with them felt heavy, oppressive like their gazes. “I’m meant to get instructions for my next task?”

Gabriel held his hand out to Sandalphon, who gave him the handle of a sturdy basket, the sight of which made Crowley’s throat tighten. “There’s a little town called Tadfield, and kind of on the outskirts is a church. We have agents there,they know what to do. All you need to do is deliver this”

Though he didn’t want to, Crowley reached out and took the bassinet “I-is this…?”

“Yes” Micheal answered, expression hard and impatient. “So treat him with care, but hurry”

His heart was racing, and he thought he might be seeing his life flash before his eyes, because this is it. This is how the end begins. Eleven years might as well be a breath. It couldn’t be so soon. The Earth had so much more progress to make, humans had more lives to live and Crowley… Crowley had “Now? Already?”

“It’s time”

“The… Mother?” Cowley asked vaguely.

“Is God herself. This isn’t the dark ages, and we’re not Hell.” Uriel answered this time, frowning at the thought of Hell’s son, who lived a good life and was worshiped as God’s son.

Crowley thought about Aziraphale as Adam Christ’s midwife. Had they been hit with a numb moment, broken by overwhelming dread all that time before? It would be likely that any fear Aziraphale felt then couldn’t be compared to Crowley’s in this moment. Christ’s birth didn’t bring with it the end of days.

With Heaven’s new son will come a “cleansing” of the Earth, which ultimately is just an excuse to use it as a battlefeild to go to war with Hell on. They had eleven years to…

Come to terms with it. The fact that one or both of them will truly die, and they’ll be separated forever. Crowley couldn’t conceive of forever. He lived for some time before his time on Earth, and six thousand years felt to him like, well, forever. Eternity, actual forever, the only thing that could make such a prolonged existence bearable was Aziraphale.

He’d wasted those six millennia, hadn't he? By circling Aziraphale silently and only sharing the most inane thoughts, only the thoughts that kept his mind from it. The thoughts that disguise the marrow-deep yearning that served as his only constant for one hundred lifetimes. He should have told him as soon as he could name the feeling. Would that have pushed him away in the beginning? Would it push him away now? How could he tell him now, with the end so near? “Hey, Lamb, I’ve got bad news, the world’s probably on schedule to end before any of our folks even get rights, so that sucks. But since we’re all gonna die soon, I wanted to tell you I fell in love with you on Eden’s wall and every day it only gets worse.”

Crowley shuddered and found himself nodding and mumbling along to what the archangels had to say. It couldn’t be very important. Nothing was really important, not now that this child was here to grow into a little holy tyrant. His mind couldn't be drawn back to them until Gabriel said “I assume the demon Aziraphale will try whatever he can to stop you, so be alert”

Crowley didn’t like how he said Aziraphale’s name. He also didn’t like the reminder that Heaven _knew_ about Aziraphale. Heaven_ thought_ about Aziraphale and took the obstacle he posed into account. There were times when Crowley could convince himself that everything between him and Aziraphale was all their own, that Heaven and Hell had no real power over them. Until he hears Gabriel say his name like that and the illusion shatters.

He was numb as he left and numb as he drove, numb as he handed the bassinet to a nun who was beside herself in the presence of an angel. Crowley didn’t pay attention to the man who spoke to him outside the church. The moment he was inside his car with the door closed, he was telling his phone to call Aziraphale. There was no sound in response to this request and he swore to himself as he tried to remember if he had charged his phone. He saw a payphone and pulled the bentley over to it, dialing Aziraphale’s number on that with much more success.

Aziraphale’s voice came through, “A. Z. Fell and Co’s Occult books and-”

“Lamb, it’s me” Crowley sighed into the plastic receiver and something in his voice must have given the demon all the information he needed, because there was a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the call.

“Oh.” Aziraphale breathed and his dread was clear from that one syllable alone “I assume this is about…”

“Yes. It’s here” Crowley swallowed “The end times”

“Meet me at the shop. Please” Aziraphale said, voice tight.

"Already on my way" Crowley set the phone on the receiver and climbed back into the Bentley, which helpfully cycled through any and all Queen songs that mention a demon. "Not now. Really, it's not a good time" he pleaded with it and the volume lowered by a few notches. With the pedal pressed to the floor, though Crowley never drove any other way, he made it to Soho before midnight. Aziraphale opened the door before Crowley was at the top step, letting light leak out from inside as he beaconed him in.

They didn't say anything to each other as they both walked directly to the back of the shop. Aziraphale sat heavily in his favorite couch and Crowley went to the liquor cabinet "what should we start with? Red, white, something harder?"

"What does it matter, we'll drink it all anyway" Aziraphale answered, all hope and light that usually presided in his voice gone. He leaned forward, elbows settling onto his knees. It was jarring to see him sober with less than perfect posture.

Crowley grabbed an armful of bottles and carefully straightened his legs to stand, ignoring the popping of his knees. "Let's try and not think quite yet, how does that sound?"

"It sounds like we should have saved that jar of apples for now. I'd rather like an out of body experience in this moment" he accepted a bottle handed to him with a brief thankful smile and wasted no time in popping it open.

Crowley tilted his and sprawled across the parallel loveseat "What was it like for you? If you don't mind"

Aziraphale hummed and tilted his head back trying to remember "well I remember I saw human writing for the first time. All sorts of languages, I couldn't parse any of it, because I still had to learn it, which I couldn't because none of it existed yet. At some point I realised I had to set it all in motion myself. There were… a lot of other revelations made, but I'd have to find my earliest notes to remember it more clearly" the bottle in his hand tipped as he took several hefty sips from it that left him wincing.

"You're the reason humans started writing?" Crowley asked in awe. "Could you have ever imagined then, what they'd get done with what you gave them?"

"How could I? Millions of minds through time, hundreds of different languages, how could I have imagined the scope of it? The poetry they're capable of…" he sighed wistfully "I'm always looking forward to see what great works they'll make next, what new writing conventions or tropes will arise with the new generation, that sort of thing." He took a breath that shook him, his eyes shining "but it'll all be over before they can progress much more"

Crowley squirmed in his seat. The last time he'd seen Aziraphale so hopeless was in a hospital in the eighties. He never knew how to act around him when he wasn't his usual jovial self. Something told him he might never see Aziraphale as he's meant to be again. "No thinking, remember? You always break the rules before they have time to settle"

"Well I try to break them before they are spoken into existence but there are times I'm not fast enough" Aziraphale said, and it was enough of a joke to ease Crowley.

"Well here's a new rule for you to break, yeah?" Crowley lifted the bottle in his hand "No drinking. Certainly no finishing that bottle and opening a new one"

Aziraphale let out a put-upon sigh before setting about emptying his bottle. It took him a while, unused as his posh body was to chugging. When he was done, he placed the bottle on the ground in a hurry, flapping his hands up and down with an unhappy expression. "Gosh!"

Crowley hid a grin behind the lip of his whiskey "oooh that looks rough. Need a chaser?"

"Anything to get the taste out. Vile" his tongue poked out briefly and he was still pouting.

"Cocoa? Or is something cold better?"

"Cold please"

Crowley stood and hurried to the kitchenette, opening the shitty old fridge he'd probably replace soon while Aziraphale isn't looking. He'd miracle a drink up for him, but he made a point of avoiding miracles in Aziraphale's home out of fear of drawing too much of heaven's attention to the place. "Adam Christ, Aziraphale how many varieties of juiced fruit could one man need?"

"They all taste different!"

He huffed and shook his head "Well alright, which one do you want?"

"Any of them, dear"

"All of em? Alright" he started relocating cartons of juice to the counter, and he pulled down the largest glass he could find because he intended to steal some after Aziraphale drank. He ignored Aziraphale's distant protest as he mixed. When he proudly presented the discolored liquid, Aziraphale pretended to glare up at him.

He did accept the drink though, and after trying it, he begrudgingly admitted that it was pretty alright. Crowley took the cup back to try it, but he couldn't pay much attention to the taste when the rim of the glass was still warm from the touch of his lips. "Yeah not bad, for unfermented fruit. Too sweet, maybe"

"I think it's actually quite tasty" when he was given the cup again, he held it between his knees and opened a new bottle of alcohol that looked like water, and poured in at least three shots worth.

"Oh, damn" Crowley said, eyebrows up. "Have the gay clubs been effecting your taste in alcohol that much?"

"Wine is still my favorite, I'm not someone else entirely. I just really really don't want to be sober right now" he drank straight from the bottle and then from the cup "it's still a chaser"

Crowley didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified. It was better to pretend they were getting shitfaced for absolutely no reason, but that was hard when nothing felt the same as it did just one night ago. "When we're done here, we might have killed every brain cell we have"

"Oh, well we should save at least one between the two of us"

Crowley laughed, but the sound lacked it's usual warmth "We won't have much use for it in less than a decade and a half"

Aziraphale put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and fell the sounds of it, he may have been crying.

There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say would change the face that no matter how this ends, neither of them had a future. Heaven wasn't a proper home, it was a bourgie office building. And Hell was so antithetical to Aziraphale's quiet, gentle nature that just visiting the cursed pit drained Aziraphale of all of his energy. The likelihood that they'd both survive was low, and really only possible in a prisoner of war type situation. If Heaven won and Aziraphale died, Crowley's survival would be in name only. There'd be nothing of him left with the humans all disposed of and his only friend gone. If Heaven won, Crowley decided with a solemn swig of his liquor, he'd twist the valve on that old gas lantern and burn his house down with himself inside. If Hell won, the choice would be made for him and he'd burn anyway.

"The humans aren't going to understand what's happening to them" Aziraphale said weepily.

"The animals even less" Crowley took the big glass of fruit mystery surprise and drank. "They can't turn to each other and say 'hey are you seeing this shit too?'. They just have to face it without any way to get answers. They didn't do anything"

"None of them did. Do you think we could have done something along the way? Something to change their minds about this war?" Aziraphale asked out of regret and not hope.

Crowley sighed "no. I don't think anyone on this little rock has that sort of power. We're infinitesimal in the scale of our own creation"

"Well they certainly don't ignore the Earth" Aziraphale said like a confession, looking guilty over not mentioning it before. "They've got all sorts of…” he waved a hand vaguely “surveillance. I saw an ‘Earth observation room’ when I was down there last” his voice wavered with anxiety.

“Oh.” Crowley swallowed, trying to remain calm, but all he could imagine was Gabriel and Micheal watching him drool over a demon for six thousand years. “Might they have seen… us, then?”

“Well, surely they’d have intervened by now if they did” Aziraphale reasoned, but he didn’t sound too convinced. “No point in worrying over it now, I suppose, what with… darker clouds on the horizon”

Crowley stayed silent for a while. Nothing could be said to ease the horror that had set in. After some time, he huffed "I really don't like this"

"It isn't great"

"It's just so upsetting- I mean, nobody asked the animals" Crowley continued weepily "nobody can even tell them. They just… their minds'll never really be understood, y'know? We can know the scope of it and they're all like- like little universes all their own- just neurons like stars blinking on and off in and out of time and it must feel like an eternity to a cell or an atom. And they're about to be gone. All those little universes"

Aziraphale tilted his head, trying to look thoughtful, but he just looked drunk "now- well now what's this, dear? What's this about universes and such, which universes?"

"The um… god, Fuck… the things. Dolphins! You ever seen- they just have massive brains always chattering away and thinking and learning! And whales?! Brain city, whales! The oceans they're just full of brains and they'll all be… brain soup. Too much salt in it too, so you can't even enjoy it"

Aziraphale nodded then, almost wisely, as if listening to a philosophical musing "Jormungandr"

"What's 'is?" Crowley mumbled.

"Great big friendly snake. Loki and Angraboda's son. He lives in the ocean, they say he's big enough to wrap around the Earth and bite his tail. 'Supposed to rise up and fight Thor. Swallow the sun. When it all happens. When the sea boils"

"Oh" Crowley rubbed his eyes, trying to think "will that all happen too? At the same time? Are we about to see every prophecized end all at once?"

Aziraphale shuddered "I hope not. I don't know what to expect. I…" he took a deep breath "I don't know if I'll ever get to go to the right afterlife and meet my gods"

"Lamb, I…" Crowley stopped when he realized he didn't have anything to say.

"I don't think I can handle all this drunk" Aziraphale said, rubbing his red cheeks "I'm going to sober up"

Crowley sighed "yeah alright". He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to infinite the unpleasant feeling in his stomach or the bitter taste in his mouth.

Aziraphale sighed and tilted his head back to rest it in the back of the couch.

"I'm not so sure I believe in any of that inherent nature mess. Destiny and all. How could we know the future- really? Don't they- dont they have autonomy?"

"It all sounds rather authoritarian, if you ask me"

“It’s hard to imagine. Nothing seemed particularly special about the kid. Could you tell, when you helped Mary deliver Adam? That there was something world-shattering about him?”

“No” he said "and to be honest, I couldn't sense anything particularly dark in him as he grew. Though perhaps my efforts to counteract the Hell in him really did work"

"Oh? What sort of efforts?" Crowley asked as curiosity overpowered dread.

Aziraphale shrugged, frowning into the bottle in his hand "I made sure he was surrounded by people who cared about him. Made sure he felt loved"

"He was a good kid, Aziraphale. No Hell at all" like you, he thought.

Eden's Lamb smiled "thank you dear. That is a comfort"

"You think maybe… t' same philosophy could, I dunno" he waved a hand "counteract the Heaven in this new kid?"

"How do you mean, dear? Would the child have to grow up around cruel people?"

Crowley shook his head "nah, I don't think Heaven is so much hell's opposite. I think the opposite is earth. Humanity. It's er… the opposite of heaven and hell. I'd bet all we really need to do is raise the kid like Adam Christ was raised"

"Love and support? I think it makes sense. After all, love and support is how you raise a good human in general and a good human is more likely to, well… care about the continued existence of the world." Aziraphale stood up and tugged on the bottom hem of his waistcoat "we'll need to perform a few miracles and spells respectively to put good people in his life"

"Well why don't we do it ourselves?"

"Do it personally? Like, as the child's caregivers?"

Crowley shrugged "yeah why not?"

"Are you worried about the paper trail connecting you to this if you use miracles?"

Crowley nodded "best to not get caught. Sounds like a good way to end up burning early and finishing out this war on your side. I remember you told me never to fall. Back in Eden. Still feel the same?"

Aziraphale's eyebrows drew together and he looked at Crowley with a deep sorrow "well I- I rather like you in pink." He gestured to Crowley's pants "you'd never get away with this color down below"

Forging documents was Aziraphale's least favorite aspect of passing as human. He always ended up having to do it for Crowley too. Things like taxes and bills, the more boring responsibility kind of task was not Crowley's strong suit. It was particularly tedious knowing they'd need to remake their personas in only a few years. Usually they could keep a name for a few decades, but they needed to raise this child without suspicion.

The name Crowley chose to Nanny under, which Aziraphale was painting into a fake ID, was Piety Absalom. Aziraphale wasn't sure what he'd expected. The name he'd chosen to use as their gardener was Ariadne Ampelos. He'd chosen it when he realized he needed to find a feminine name to match Crowley's and he looked around the room for inspiration. His focus had fallen on his altar for Dionysus. Crowley laughed when he heard the name, ave Aziraphale was surprised he recognized it.

Neither of them looked forward to having to sleep in someone else's home, away from their shop and house. Aziraphale found the necessary enthusiasm upon seeing Nanny Piety. She had the energy of Mary Poppins with a full set of restraints and a strap-on in her bag of holding. Ms. Piety wore long narrow skirts and frilled blouses. Her sunglasses were the same mirrored style Crowley had worn since the seventies. Her hair was carefully styled in immaculate curls and she carried herself with a quiet strength that said "I'll hold you after I've punished you". Inexplicably, Piety was also Scottish.

It wasn't lost on Aziraphale that this particular instance of lust was significantly worse than most others. They were there to watch over and raise cleansing fire personified. Crowley hadn't come up with Piety Absalom to be an object of desire.

The first opinion Aziraphale held of the family was that they were a disgusting breed of rich. The second was that Harriet Dowling must have been delirious when she named her child Jesus. Aziraphale and Crowley had shared a look upon hearing the biblical name and Aziraphale could tell they'd laugh about it the moment they were alone together.

Jesus Dowling was…

Well Aziraphale wasn't sure there was anything specific to be said about an Infant. With their limited capacity for communication, there was very little personality a baby was capable of displaying. In Aziraphale's experience, no human was even remotely similar to the youngest version of themself. They'd have to wait to truly meet Jesus Dowling.

Despite their living situation bringing them closer, Aziraphale didn't run into Crowley very often. She spent her days praying and keeping the garden alive with surreptitious spells and her nights behind the locked door of her little cabin, a hand between her legs. She wasn't proud of how often She was brought to it. It didn't use to happen more than once a month or so before Crowley was close enough to smell the stardust on.

Aziraphale had her face in her pillow and her hips in the air, white century-old nightgown gathered around her chest when there was a knock on her cabin door. A spell cleaned her hand, but she didn't remember to do anything for her flushed face or disheveled hair. She smoothed out her shift and opened the door to find Crowley, in no more of a decent state. She held a white shawl close to her over her shoulders and her night-gown would have touched the floor if she wasn't so tall. The moment the door was opened, she huffed out Aziraphale’s fake name and slipped in past her to sit on her bed, which had stayed neatly made and un-disturbed since the beginning of their employment. “It means the world to me to have another woman on the grounds.” she said in her Scottish accent and Aziraphale realized she was in character. “Mr. Dowling has been more exhausting than the child. I know we don’t know each other well, but I feel neither of us would survive another month working under that man without a friend”

Confused but intrigued, Aziraphale played along, placing a hand over her heart “I wouldn’t turn away a colleague in need of support, Mrs. Absalom"

"Ms." Crowley corrected without missing a beat, and there was something cheeky in the way her eyelashes fluttered. "But you're my equal. You should call me Piety"

Aziraphale looked around and whispered "Crowley, dear, why are we doing this?"

Crowley mirrored her conspiratorial body language, leaning forward on her elbows with a grave expression "I've been extremely bored. Figured three might be fun in playing up this 'strangers working and living together' bit." There was a pause where her face grew worried "th-though in truth I just thought it would be easier to keep up appearances if we have our stories straight and all…"

Aziraphale's heart ached for Crowley. She'd been lonely too, wandering about the garden casting a spell whenever nobody was looking to do the job. People tended to stay in the house and Aziraphale had spent multiple days in complete silence. It was maddening, enough to almost make her miss all those humans constantly trying to buy her best books. She hadn't been avoiding Crowley, but she didn't make an effort to be around her either and it made her feel guilty. "Oh. Of course, the strategic benefits are clear" she assured as she took a seat next to Crowley. "After all, you seem like a strong woman, and kind. I'd be happy to be your friend, Piety. Perhaps we already have a friend in common? Might get name be Dorothy?" Aziraphale put an innocent upward tilt to the end of the question.

"Haa- hold on- wait" Crowley put the knuckle of her fore-finger to her lips and it looked like she was trying to compose herself. She laughed for a moment, but was soon back in character "Oh I've been close friends with Dorothy all my life"

Aziraphale hadn't ever been very quick with verbal flirting. She hadn't thought this through far enough. "H-have got been told recently that your hair is gorgeous?"

Crowley blushed "friend of mine might have mentioned it a while back, but we were both pretty drunk. I like your hair, too, it's so much like show the way it accentuates the pink of your lips"

Aziraphale could feel her pulse all through her body "I've never seen a person look so regal in a nightgown". Regal might not have been the first word she'd have chosen if it weren't for the way Crowley made her feel like a six thousand year old virgin. Just thinking about half-implying she looked at Crowley's body in clingy pink satin made her head spin.

"When are your days off?" Crowley asked and it seemed like an impulsive move.

"Likely the same as yours, I'm sure"

"How convenient. Might you want to go in to town with me someday? We could get something to eat"

"That would be lovely, dear girl"

Aziraphale only realized later, after Crowley had returned to bed, that she had been asked on a date. In character, of course, but certainly a date. Was Crowley trying to have fun with this situation and really get into acting as Piety? She was a great actor.

2011

Visiting Aziraphale in the dead of night had been a stroke of genius. Getting to see her white hair ruffled about her shoulders, the shadows of her body through her shift, the flush of her cheeks- it was all quite the reward. She went on to do it again, at least twice a week. She noticed after a while that if she was too predictable, Aziraphale would be more put together and less flushed.

By the time they'd spent two years on the property, they went on five in-character dates and would regularly sneak away from work to flirt. It was impressive how Aziraphale would put herself into a fictional pair of shoes.

Even though Crowley knew the relationship was nothing but roles they played, but it was something she needed. They went about it like a dramatic play about lovers who needed to avoid getting caught. The pace was like a regency era love novel where fingertips grazing a knuckle is a stand-in for sex. At least Crowley had the nights.

She'd look out the window of her bedroom after the dark properly overtook the ground and Aziraphale was long done with her rituals. She never went out there at the same time as the last visit, but she realized the later she waited the better. On this specific night, the clock hit 11:35 before she chose an immodest nightgown and a shawl and slipped out of the main house to follow the stepping stones to Aziraphale's door. This time, unlike every time before, knocking brought no answer. Crowley put her hand on the knob and was so convinced that the door was unlocked that it gave no resistance when she opened it.

Aziraphale's bed was in direct view of the door. Crowley had never seen Aziraphale on a bed, outside of sitting next to her. But Aziraphale was on her bed, leaned back over some pillows with her soft thighs spread apart to make room for her hand. Her legs were covered in even more tattoos than Crowley had expected and the hair between her legs was white.

"Crowley!" She squealed, pulling her shift to cover herself. Crowley had never seen her face so red.

Crowley had suspected that this was the thing that made Aziraphale so out of breath every night. She never thought she'd actually see it happen. "My name's Piety, dear girl, who's Crowley?"

Aziraphale put her face in her hands for a moment, collecting herself before getting into character "Pitey I-I'm sorry for yelling I'm just… quite embarrassed"

Crowley walked forward and joined Aziraphale on the bed, sitting at her feet and facing her "I'm sorry to have intruded. Are you okay?"

She nodded, but it didn't seem like she could make eye contact. "H-how has your night been, dear?"

"Same as every other night I visit you" Crowley said, looking over the tattoos she could still see on Aziraphale's thighs. At least fifty percent of the tattoos were snakes, several of which wound around Aziraphale's ample legs in a way that could only be understood as sensual. Two or three snakes found their heads near, and made an effort to get closer to, Aziraphale's crotch. All Crowley could find herself wanting was to be one of those snakes. "Better now that I'm looking at you"

Aziraphale shifted her legs, rubbing them together in a way that hypnotized Crowley "a charmer as always, aren't you?" She asked.

"Well now let's be fair" she reached out a hand to trace a few tattoos with her finger "nothing charms like these. Lovely works of art. And the tattoos are certainly nice as well"

Aziraphale covered her face again "Crowley, what are we doing?"

"Piety" Crowley corrected, then, back in character, she tsked "really dear, between a Christian and a pagan, you'd expect me to be the shy one. Adriadne, open your eyes" she tilted Aziraphale's chin up to look at her. An idea came to her and thrilled her, so she was rid of her undergarments with a wave of her free hand. "Would you be more comfortable if we were in more even ground?"

"How do you mean, Piety?" Aziraphale asked, but the look in her eyes and the way she glanced down Crowley's body made it clear she understood.

Crowley grabbed the hem of her nightgown and lifted it, slowly, all the way to her belly button to reveal red curls and sharp hip-bones.

Aziraphale stared, unblinking, her hand in front of her mouth.

It was then that Crowley's sense caught up with her and part of her was absolutely shocked to catch herself exposing her genitals to the demon she spent six millennia lusting after. It was then that she realized she'd taken this role-playing game too far. She dropped the hem of her dress and scrambled off the bed to stand and get to the door. "I'm sorry. Sorry. Fuck. I'm sorry"

2019

Aziraphale dug through his pocket into he found the little silver pin he was looking for. He didn't remember how he came to own it, but he had seen it when getting ready to leave that morning and he picked it up in case of the exact situation he found himself in. It was about an inch long with several dangling jewels that didn't look real. He jingled the trinket in his hand before leaning over the arm of the bench to offer it to a large crow sitting by him in the roots of a tree.

The crow was from a long line that Aziraphale and Crowley had befriended at some point, and they always seemed so jazzed to receive a gift that shines.

"The kid'll be turning eleven soon." Crowley grumbled next to Aziraphale. They were sitting in Crystal Palace Park, having just gotten over an argument over whether dinosaurs ever existed in the first place, watching Jesus Dowling misbehave in a desperate ploy for any attention at all from his mother. "Do you think we did enough?"

"I certainly hope"

Covered in cake, ears ringing from the screams of roughly three dozen eleven-year-olds, Aziraphale and Crowley climbed into the Bentley in frustrated silence. Neither of them were willing to confront the possibility that they weren't huge fans of every child.

What was much more daunting to confront, though, was the events of the day and what they meant.

After a while, Aziraphale asked "might the dog be coming later today? Certainly heaven doesn't care when the party is"

"No. Three o clock. Holy trinity and all that"

"Your lot is _not_ the first to see the number three as holy"

"Right, Yeah. But" Crowley took a deep breath, staring ahead and gripping the steering wheel, despite not moving. "There was no dog"

Dread settled in as Aziraphale nodded "no dog. Which means…"

"Wrong boy" Crowley said through clenched teeth.

"Wrong boy"


End file.
